After 2 full days of poker, almost 3 hours of final table action and a little over 10 minutes of heads-up play, Hassan Salha was crowned Champion of the Playground 200, a natural outcome that resulted from unbelievable play. Salha was hands down the fiercest competitor. Since early in Day 2, his well-calculated aggressiveness served him extremely well. This type of play got him a lot of free pots, and also a lot of value from players who just could not bring themselves to believe him anymore.

The Playground 200 attracted 607 players spread on 4 Day 1s – 1 online and 3 live. 126 players managed to send a stack to Day 2. On that Day, Hassan Salha was either 1st or 2nd in chips on ALL leaderboards, a very rare thing. He also had a partypoker LIVE patch on him, and as the Champion, he was incidentally the winner of the partypoker promo. All players who joined My partypoker LIVE were given a patch, and the last patch in the field would win a $530 Satellite Final ticket, to be redeemed next Sunday for a chance at winning a MILLIONS Main Event seat.

Among the 9 Day 3 qualifiers was Isham Yamani. He was playing in this afternoon’s 8-max tournament, and was on the final table with only 3 players left when Day 3 got underway. He had to leave his 8-max stack unattended in order to be able to play his Playground 200 final. He got second place in the 8-max, and was the first player in Playground history to make it to heads-up without being at their seat!

Elvira Popescu qualified online for this weekend’s big Event. She started at the bottom of the satellite hill, and qualified her way to this Event with an initial buy-in of $0.50!! To be fair, she did put in an extra $2 for the add-on, bringing her investment to $2.50. She enjoyed an ROI of 499,040%. Not too bad, is it?

But back to Hassan Salha. He single-handedly eliminated 5th, 4th, 3rd, and 2nd place finishers. He started the heads-up match with about 85% of the chips in play, and play small ball poker, not letting his opponent find value, until he found a spot.

Elvira Popescu woke up with , but decided to play it passively. Salha was doing such a good job at not giving her chips that her best bet was to let him come to her. However, Salha’s had flopped a queen, and that was the end of the tournament.

Congratulations to both finalists!

Our Playground 200 Champion: Hassan Salha – $21,000.00

Runner-up: Elvira Popescu – $12,476.00

Last hand of play:

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