Local player wins at the Irish Open We always feel great pride when a Canadian player has success abroad. Brigitte Métivier, a regular at Playground, took down early this morning the €250 Ladies’ Event at the 2019 Irish Open. There were 70 runners in the tournament, but in the end, only Métivier was left, and she was able to scoop the Ladies’ Event trophy and the €4,610 first prize. Well done! The Lotus grants a 5-figure Jackpot Last Monday, Carmen N. came to Playground with her husband for some late-night fun on the Electronic Gaming Devices. She was playing one of our most popular games, Eternal Lotus, the game that holds the current record for the biggest EGD Jackpot awarded at Playground – $28,791.93. The lotus had a little surprise in store for Carmen. On the same spin, a perfect blend of gold coins and lotus symbols appeared […]
Author: Jôle Simard
Road to MILLIONS – Episode 5
This week’s STEP qualifier did not have to invest a single dollar to earn his seat at MILLIONS North America. He mostly plays tournaments, and won a STEP 2 seat by placing in the top 15 of the monthly Tournament Leaderboard. A couple of tournaments later, he’s on the list of qualifiers for the $10,300 Main Event in May! He tells us about his road to MILLIONS and the toys (cars) he would buy if he wins big next month. Introducing… Ivan the Terrible. (More great content coming up on Playground’s official YouTube channel. Please subscribe!)
More additions to MILLIONS North America
MILLIONS North America is less than a month away, and the poker community’s chatter is all about the event! partypoker LIVE and Playground keep an open ear, and player feedback sparked a few last-minute changes to the MILLIONS schedule. A Caribbean Poker Party satellite The famous Caribbean Poker Party will once again host the Grand Finale of the 2019 MILLIONS tour with MILLIONS World. At Playground, home of MILLIONS North America, we are happy to add a Caribbean Poker Party satellite at the heart of the festival! The tournament presents a guarantee of two packages worth $16,000 USD each. For a buy-in of $250 + $25, you could win the trip of a lifetime. The package includes a $10,300 buy-in to MILLIONS World with $10,000,000 guaranteed (Nov. 16-21), plus travel and accommodation. What does it look like over there? Click here for a quick preview! Shot clocks! MILLIONS […]
Mondial de la bière… it means Beerfest!
The Mondial de la bière, founded in Montreal in 1994, is a full-fledged international beer festival. The unique weekend-long tasting event provides a pathway from the art of local and international brewers to the taste buds of passionate and casual beer drinkers, and the 26th edition of the festival is held during MILLIONS North America, allowing all players to discover new and exciting concoctions! The event is once again held at Windsor Station in downtown Montreal (near metro stations Lucien-L’Allier, Bonaventure and Peel). It will be open to festival-goers from 11:00AM to 11:00PM, May 22 to May 25 – Wednesday to Friday. Admission is free, but to indulge in the main activity, you will need to buy a tasting glass and some coupons – they come in various packages, depending on how much discovery you plan to make. The festival bets on breweries that are not necessarily well-known, but have […]
partypoker closes 277 “bot” accounts
Last week, partypoker confirmed 277 bot account closures and $734,852.15 in redistributed funds between December 1, 2018 and March 31, 2019. The operation is conducted by partypoker’s Poker Fraud Team, said partypoker representatives, which is essentially “a collection of former poker professionals who are equipped with the necessary knowledge and expertise to investigate suspicious activity and aid partypoker in ridding the site of unscrupulous accounts.” The team works diligently to detect any suspicious activity on the tables, as well as investigate any suspecting player report. Suspicious activity can arise in the form of collusion between two or more players, or the use of bots or other prohibited software designed to give the offending player an unfair advantage. partypoker encourages all players who suspect foul play to report their doubts to info@partypoker.com, and promises to investigate all reports. partypoker is one of the oldest and most trusted online poker brands. A […]
Road to MILLIONS – Episode 4
This week’s featured player is Playground’s very first tournament winner! He won the first tournament ever held in our club, 8 years ago. It was a $100 event, but he is no stranger to $10K buy-ins either. His first major was in 2009: he played a WPT event at Fallsview Casino Resort in Ontario. He has yet to make a big score in one of these monster tournaments, and hopes that MILLIONS North America will be it! He jumped in a STEP 1 satellite following a casual invitation from our tournament director. He couldn’t turn down such attractive overlay! The very same night, he played the STEP 2, got through, and played the STEP 3 satellite on the following day. He is here now, qualified, pumped up for MILLIONS in May! Introducing… Carlo Nini. (More great content coming up on Playground’s official YouTube channel. Please subscribe!)
Coal-fired action
A walk in the park! Michel Hiron came to Playground on Saturday with a whole entourage. The party of 5 came for a night of entertainment, and entertainment they found! Michel was mixing it up on one of our multi-game EGDs. He went into free game mode, and at exactly 11:08PM, his machine prompted him to call an attendant: he had just won $3,691.06! When posing for the camera, moments after his big hit, Michel gave us this amazing look as if to say: “That was easy!” Sevens a-blazin’! Wednesday night, Sylvain Groulx was playing a variation of the Quick Hit game called Quick Hit Platinum Triple Blazing 7s. Sylvain was spinning, and sevens were blazing! He went straight into free game mode, and caught a $3,768.65 Jackpot! A wrap and a slice On April 14, the Sunday PLO event gets a boost. The buy-in, normally at […]
Juggling fruits with a glass of sangria
Snow never fails to fall in spring, but that’s behind us now. Nice weather is here, and as we let the sunshine in, our drinks evolve… and what concoction screams nice weather louder than sangria? Today, we wish to present you with the first of our EGD/drink pairing series! Sangria is traditionally prepared with red wine, soda, juice and fresh fruits. Most linguists attribute the name’s origin to the Spanish word sangre, which means blood, referencing the colour of the drink. Little is known about the origins of the drink itself, but much is known about the different ways to prepare it! The exact recipe of Playground’s sangria remains a secret – sorry! – but some ingredients can be revealed: red wine and fruits. Our Electronic Gaming space is no stranger to fruits, as you might imagine, but none puts them forth better than 5 Juggle Fruits, a game as […]
MILLIONS of Beats
Montreal, a tourism hot spot, is one of North America’s most visited cities. Harbouring countless festivals (nearly 100 multi-day events each year!), serving delicious food from all over the world, and offering a vibrant cultural and music scene, Montreal has it all. Our snow is melting fast, and come MILLIONS North America in May, the city will be ready for all poker players’ extracurricular activities! Today, for our visitors coming to town for MILLIONS and locals looking for something different, we serve a selection of two options, catered for EDM enthusiasts, but easy to appreciate by anyone. It was extremely hard to slim down our recommendations, but these two fully deserve their nomination. Velvet Speakeasy In the Old Port, in the basement of an old Montreal inn, there is a large room with stone walls that has existed since 1754. Today, it is home to the Velvet Speakeasy, a […]
Global Poker Awards Highlights
Last Friday at the Aria in Las Vegas, the Global Poker Awards ceremony recognized some of the most influential people in poker. Although we all knew that William Foxen and Kristen Bicknell were receiving their Player of the Year (POY) awards, many more winners were yet to be revealed. The World Series of Poker Main Event, the iconic poker tournament that crowns the World Champion every year, was at the forefront of the ceremony. The tournament itself received the Event of the Year Award, while John Cynn, winner of the event, won the Tournament Performance Award. Cynn’s performance was no small feat: he bested a field of 7,874 players to take down the $8,800,000 first prize and the title! Playing with John Cynn at the final table was Joe Cada, winner of the 2009 WSOP Main Event. Cada came really close to becoming the only player in the post-Moneymaker era […]
Playground, your full-service entertainment destination!
Power Weekend gets a new face! The next Power Weekend comes May 2 to May 6, and it has a brand new face! Taking place just before MILLIONS North America, the Power Weekend and its hot fresh-off-the-press logo will warm up the tournament hall nicely for our first ever $10K buy-in Main Event. This will be your last chance to qualify for MILLIONS through our STEP satellites. Check out the schedule! Free play for the whole party! Two promotions are now in effect in Playground’s Electronic Gaming space: the Welcome Bonus and the Refer-A-Friend program. Let’s see how well these promotions tie together. If you’re already a member and bring some friends that have never played at Playground before, you get $20 in free play for each friend that you bring (Refer-A-Friend) and your friends get $20 in free play each for becoming a member (Welcome Bonus). Free play […]
Road to MILLIONS – Episode 3
This young player was born and raised in Beauce. He is a true poker fanatic. When asked what he would do if he made a big score at the MILLIONS, he did not hesitate: the first thing that came to mind was more poker! He played the 2018 MILLIONS North America after qualifying through the STEP satellite system, and he did it again this year, on his first try! Because one bullet is all you need. Boom! Let’s hear what he has to say about how to reap some STEP value. Introducing… Jean-Philippe Lehoux. (More great content coming up on Playground’s official YouTube channel. Please subscribe!)