A new professional poker tour that will travel around Latin America is set to debut in August.

The Latin Series of Poker, or LSOP, is set to debut with an event at the Majestic Casino in Panama City, Panama, August 3-9, 2009, LSOP officials said.

The event, called the LSOP Panama Event, is to be a series of poker tournaments, culminating in a Main Event that is to have a guaranteed prize pool of $500,000, they said.

Future stops for the LSOP are to include casinos in Lima, Peru; Caracas, Venezuela; Cancun, Mexico; San Jose, Costa Rica and Alajuela, Costa Rica, they said.

LSOP events will be open to anyone, not just Latin Americans.

Already, LSOP officials said, some top poker pros from around the world have expressed interest in competing in LSOP events, including Daniel “Kid Poker” Negreanu, T.J. Cloutier, Humberto “El Wacko” Brenes, Young Phan, Kenna James, Barbara Enright, James Worth, Amir Vahedi, Marsha Waggoner and Sam Simon.

It appears the LSOP has no plans to be a second-rate competitor to the more established pro poker tours, such as the World Poker Tour (WPT).

The LSOP recently hired Warren Karp to be its tournament director.

Karp served as the tournament director for the World Series of Poker (WSOP) in 2003 and 2004.

(E-mail Tom Somach at tomsomach@yahoo.com.)