January’s special event at Playground Poker Club was a $300 + $30 Deepstack Freeze, and despite several hours of snowfall on Thursday night and dropping temperatures throughout the morning on Friday, the players arrived ready to join the action on Friday afternoon.
By the time the event got underway, the published capacity of 250 players had already been reached, and dozens of alternates were waiting to take their seats as players were eliminated in the early going. By the time all of the alternates were seated, a total of 364 players had entered the event an unofficial Playground Poker Club record for a single-day stand-alone event!
Among the record field were quite a few players who have had big success in tournaments at Playground in the past, including Players Club members Jean-Philippe Piquette, George Caragiorgas and Philippe Plouffe plus past Playground champions Alexandre Lavigne, Jason Comtois, and Alim Perales.
Such huge attendance in the event added up to a massive prize pool of $105,925 which was to be paid out to the top 36 players with a top prize of $23,074.00.
With that many players, midnight was quickly approaching as the bubble burst and it wasn’t until after 1am that the tournament was down to two tables. Among the players in the money were Playground tournament regulars David Hamel, Qiang Dong, Luciano Iacovella, and Carlo Nini.
Just after 2am, Tian Lin Liao another solid Playground tournament regular was eliminated in 13th place and after another half hour of play, the remaining 12 players decided to make a deal.
They agreed to a 12-way chip chop that saw the players distribute over $84K remaining in the prize pool according to the players chip counts at the time of the deal. This meant that the chip leader, Sebastien Poirier, took home a prize of $11,150.00 while the player with the smallest stack at the time of the deal, Francois Gratton-Valiquette, banked $4,115.00.
Congratulations to all!
The Final 12
- Sebastien Poirier, $11,150.00
- Maxime Marcouiller, $8,920.00
- Brent F Mccue, $8,810.00
- Julien Lauzon, $8,620.00
- Jean-Philippe Lehoux, $8,065.00
- Pierre Marc Chadi, $7,915.00
- Andre Bilodeau, $5,570.00
- Marco Cannizzaro, $5,385.00
- Robin Millette, $5,345.00
- Peter Kasamis, $5,345.00
- Georges Hallak, $5,310.00
- François Graton-Valiquette, $4,201.00
