LAPT Playa Conchal: I'll follow the sun

At this moment in Iceland, the temperature is coming in at a balmy 6° Celsius (42.8º F). Meanwhile, here on Costa Rica's Gold Coast, we're shivering through a 30° day. For those of you who read a thermometer like me, that's 86º. We literally broke a sweat on our five-minute walk to the poker room this morning.

So, it's not as if three guys from Iceland would need much reason to escape their icebox so far north of here. Frankly, there are probably some people in Minnesota right now who wouldn't mind being here, too.

Still, weather aside, we've discovered there's a reason Gardar Geir Haukson, Daniel Mar Palsson, Hilmar Solvensson all showed up here this morning. Apparently the Icelandic trio knows how to play cards.

Just last week, they all played in the World Poker Showdown and Solvensson managed to walk away with the win and $30,000. So, he's freerolling the LAPT, not having to freeze his chips off in Iceland, and still has a shot at an LAPT title.

To grab first place, however, Solvensson will have to fight through his buddy Palsson. In just the first four levels of play today, Palsson managed to turn his 20,000 starting stack into a staggering 120,000. It the past little bit, he's fallen back below 100,000, but if you take a look a the photo below, you'll see that he doesn't look too worried.

At this hour, Palsson is among the chip leaders on Day 1. He's joined at the top by Brazil's Marcelo Dabus and American Tyler Netter.

We're just past the midway point of Level 5 with 192 of the initial 259 players left in the field.

We're expecting to play two or three more levels before breaking for the night. At that point, it should still be pretty warm outside, so we're not expecting the Icelanders to button up their shirts anytime soon.