Any list of top players over the past decade would certainly have Isildur1 – known in the real world as Viktor Blom – near the top. The Swedish online pro is best known for playing nosebleed stakes heads-up cash games, but he has also had tremendous success in a limited number of live tournament appearances as well. The legend of Isildur1 begins with tales of a previously unknown player, known only by his username, playing at the highest stakes online in late 2009. He continued playing anonymously – enduring some wild swings along the way – in high stakes NL Hold’em and PLO games for over a year before he revealed his identity at the PCA in early 2011. While Blom’s exploits as Isildur1 remain legendary online, he has also had success on the live tournament scene, despite never having played a full schedule. In 2012, he won a $100K […]

Our partners at the Deerfoot Inn & Casino ran the first Days 1 and 2 in the MILLIONS Main Event on Tuesday and Wednesday, and with those now complete, full attention shifts back to Playground Poker Club for the rest of the tournament. Five players in Calgary managed to book their way into Day 3 (out of a total of 29 Day 1 and Day 2 entries), including Ashkan Razavi with an impressive 14.18M (71bb) in chips and Thomas Taylor, who accumulated over 6M (30bb) by the time level 17 came to an end. Click/Tap here for Full Day 2 Results. Each of the 5 players has earned a $1,200 travel bonus (not taken from the prize pool) and will make their way to Montreal for Day 3. Meanwhile at Playground, attention will begin focused on Events #1, #2, and #3 – the Main Event (#4) will resume with Day […]

Season One of the partypoker LIVE MILLIONS series wrapped up in Barcelona today with the final table of the €10,300 Main Event. After a very long day of poker, Quebec pro Pascal Lefrançois emerged as the last player standing out of 1,175 entries in the tournament – the Champion was crowned! The word “epic” is sometimes used rather lightly in the poker world, but today’s action on the final table truly deserves that description. The action started with 8 players, and it took more than 4 hours for the first elimination to occur – Belgian Thomas Boivin was sent to the rail in 8th place for a €225,000 payout. Countryman Davidi Kitai followed just a few minutes later. But even with these two eliminations, it would still be more than 10 more hours before the end of the tournament arrived. Along the way, two of the greatest stars of the […]

The payouts for the Omaha Bad Beat Jackpot that was hit on Monday night are now available, and both the winner and the loser of the hand were at Playground today to pick up their winnings. Here are some shots of Spencer (winner of the hand) and Maxime Boulais (loser of the hand) receiving their oversized novelty cheques – to be replaced by normal-sized ones to take to the bank.

This tweet from Scott Blumstein was nice to see the other day: I’m ashamed to say that I’ve never been to Canada before. Excited that will change in a few weeks when I visit @PlaygroundPoker for the Party Poker 10 mil guarenteed tourney. #MILLIONSNorthAmerica — Scott Blumstein (@SBlum2711) April 5, 2018 https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js Scott Blumstein is a name that should be familiar to anyone remotely interested in the poker scene. Blumstein is the reigning World Champion, having bested a field of 7,221 players in the Main Event at the 48th World Series of Poker in 2017 – the third largest field in history. Before his unbelievable run that snagged him the most coveted prize in the game – plus $8,150,000 in cash – his biggest prize came from his win in the $560 buy-in $1 Million Deepstack Kick Off at the Borgata Summer Poker Open in July of 2016. The sweet […]

Event #6 capped off the March Power Weekend with yet another big turnout. The final tournament of the series, the $200 + $30 + $100 NL Hold’em 6-Max Bounty, brought out 131 players, enough to easily surpass the $30,000.00 guarantee. The early levels played out like many bounty tournaments: the action was loose and aggressive as players tried their best to capture as many $100 bounty chips as possible. Following the first break, the tournament took on a different character altogether, the deep stacks and huge prize pool encouraged players to control the size of the pots in their efforts to make a deep run into the money. This trend continued all the way to the money bubble when play slowed down dramatically. The hand-for-hand play on the bubble lasted for nearly an hour as the short stacks in the field were doubled up when facing elimination on four separate […]

Big changes are coming to the Playground Poker Tournament Leaderboard sponsored by partypoker, on January 1st, 2018. The most significant change is the modification of the prizes for the monthly TLB Freeroll. The First Place finisher in the monthly tournament will now win a seat to the MILLIONS North America – a $5,300 value. This brings the total of all of the prizes to over $16,000 per month! Finishers from 2nd to 10th will each win $1000 on partypoker, and players who finish from 11th to 30th will win a $109USD partypoker tournament ticket. All payouts will continue to be made on partypoker. The other major change is that starting on January 1st, online tournaments will no longer qualify for TLB points. The TLB will return to it’s “classic” formula – rewarding players at Playground Poker for their performance and participation in Live tournaments here at the Club. Be sure […]

As 2017 comes to a close, it’s fun to look back at the year that was and remember all of the great moments since last January, from Ema Zajmovic’s victory in the WPT Playground all the way through to the 7 Year Anniversary Series. To help us determine the year’s biggest moment, we turned to you. Poker players are full of opinions, and the Story of the Year was no exception. We narrowed it down to 7 choices and let you guys tell us which was the biggest! The results are now in, and the Record-Setting Bad Beat Jackpot was the story of the year! Of the 536 valid responses, this choice received a whopping 35% of the votes. In second place: Ema Zajmovic wins the WPT Playground with 26%. The record-setting $1,210,989 Bad Beat Jackpot (190 votes) Ema Zajmovic wins the WPT Playground, becoming the first woman to win […]

In the past year, something new has been taking the tournament world by storm – the Button Ante. Playground Poker Club is no exception – we used this format in a few major tournaments during the 2017 World Cup of Cards, and the response from customers was overwhelmingly positive. The concept is simple: instead of asking every player at a tournament table to contribute an ante each hand, the player on the button pays a larger ante once per table orbit. To keep it simple, the amount of the Button Ante is the equivalent of the big blind – as the big blind grows, so does the Button Ante amount. This Button Ante is pulled into the pot before the deal, and the small and big blinds are added as usual by the two players to the left of the button. There are several benefits to the Button Ante format, […]