The month of June means festival and terrace season to many Montrealers, but for the poker world it means the biggest series of the year, the 50th annual World Series of Poker in Las Vegas. Many Quebecers have made their way south to take part in what is widely considered to be poker’s championship playoffs. And they are having quite an impact! With more than 30 events already in the books, here’s an update on some notable finishes and deep runs made by friends of Playground so far. Erik Cajelais had a great run last week in Event #12, the $1,000 NLHE Super Turbo Bounty, which took him to a six-figure score. He outlasted 2,451 runners but came just short of capturing a bracelet and finished second, earning him $139,731 in the process. Kristen Bicknell, partypoker team pro and regular visitor to Playground, made the quarterfinals in Event #15, the […]

On June 17, 2019, the partypoker dotcom client will undergo a major software update. From that day on, when you log in to your partypoker account, you will be asked to select a new alias (player name). Do it within the first 24 hours after the update and you could win your share of the $500,000 Alias Race promotion! partypoker is working on a number of initiatives in order to provide players with a safe playing environment, and this update is one of the leading efforts. Changes will prevent third-party tracking tools from working, and new aliases will make all collected data worthless, allowing all players to have a fresh start. From 4:00AM on June 17, Eastern Time, players will be presented with a pop-up window prompting them to select a new alias. The $500K promotion will last 24 hours, and is split into 3 strands: ‘Login Click Cards’ will […]

The 2019 MILLIONS tour, which was initially comprised of 5 major events, was just added another stop. From June 28 to July 2, the famous ARIA in Las vegas will host MILLIONS Vegas ‘Special Edition,’ a $5,000,000 guaranteed poker tournament that will sit amidst ARIA’s comprehensive summer schedule. MILLIONS Vegas ‘Special Edition,’ located between MILLIONS North America and MILLIONS Europe, is the very next stop on the tour. It is a standalone $5M guaranteed special edition of the tour’s centrepiece Main Event, with a $10,300 buy-in. It features two Day 1s, with only one entry allowed per flight, following the tour’s Main Event format. However, at the request of partypoker LIVE partners, registration will remain open for the first 2 levels of Day 2. John Duthie, President of partypoker LIVE, said: “The partnership with ARIA in Vegas is a significant step marking the first time partypoker LIVE has hosted a […]

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 […]

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 […]

partypoker has launched online “SHORTDECK” games for its global dotcom market, a cash game format gaining popularity in the poker world and a favourite among high roller circles. Also known as “Six-Plus Hold’em,” the format offers an exciting variation on traditional Texas Hold’em marked by a few key differences. Most significantly, the game is played with a reduced deck of cards. All cards below a 6 are removed, leaving a 36-card deck. An ace can be used as high or low, making A-6-7-8-9 the Short Deck “wheel” or low straight. The other important distinction is in the hand rankings; in Short Deck Hold’em, a flush beats a full house. Available on 2-Max, 6-Max, 8-Max and 9-Max tables, the game requires every player to place an ante pre-flop, resulting in larger opening pots than in Texas Hold’em. For example, at a regular $100 buy-in 6-Max Hold’em table with blinds of $0.50/$1, […]

MILLIONS South America, first stop of the partypoker LIVE 2019 MILLIONS tour, ended last night with the last hand of Day 5 in the Main Event, largest tournament in Latin American history, held at the world-famous Copacabana Palace Hotel in Rio, Brazil. After a 3-hour long heads-up battle, Marty Mathis defeated Bruno Volkmann to put his hands on the MILLIONS South America trophy and $873,700 USD. The day started with 6 players at the official final table, led by a local player, Brazilian Bruno Volkmann. In second place was none other than home-grown talent Samuel Gagnon. Champion-to-be Marty Mathis was in 5th, with just about 20% of the leader’s stack. At Playground, we remember Gagnon from his 7th place finish in the 2016 WPT Montreal, the historical tournament that was won by Mike Sexton himself. Gagnon also finished 10th in this year’s World Cup of Cards Main Event, the WPTDeepstacks. […]

It’s time for progressive knockouts! The famous KO Series returns to the partypoker felts from February 3 to February 17, promising over $15M in guaranteed prize money – a 33% increase since last edition – across 437 tournaments! Every single tournament in the aptly named festival follows the increasingly popular Progressive Knockout (PKO) format, where every player carries a bounty that grows every time they eliminate a player. The schedule offers a range of popular game formats to satisfy all tastes, including “Normal,” “Mix-Max,” “PLO,” “6-Max” and “8-Max.” All events fall under one of six buy-in tiers from “Micro” to “Super High Roller” with buy-ins ranging from $2.20 to $3,150, accommodating all poker bankrolls. Keep in mind that whatever level you play, partypoker waives the rake on the bounty portion of the buy-in. Everybody loves extra value! Of course, there is an extensive satellite schedule that accompanies the series along […]

Gavin Smith, Canadian poker legend and former Playground Player’s Club member, passed away in his sleep last night, in his Houston home. He was 50 years old. Gavin had his poker breakthrough in 2005 when he won a $2,000 event at the Mirage Poker Showdown for $155,880. One week later, he won the WPT main event of that festival for $1,153,778. After adding 2 more final table appearances that year, he was named WPT Player of the Year. He followed up with a prolific career, collecting 6-figure cashes throughout the next decade, including a WSOP bracelet and the associated $268,238 in 2010, as well as a 4th place finish at the inaugural WPT Montreal worth $212,973, held at Playground in 2012. From his visits at Playground, we remember him as a highly entertaining individual and a one-of-a-kind character. His opponents, although usually having a tough time matching his poker skills, […]

With every new year, in all forms of competition, we reflect on the accomplishments of our highest achievers. In poker, to a large extent, this means attributing the Global Poker Index (GPI) Player of the Year (POY) awards. In 2018, American William Foxen finished first in front of Stephen Chidwick, David Peters, and high stakes darling Justin Bonomo, while our own Kristen Bicknell, was recognized as the Female Player of the Year… for the second year running! William had an amazing year. After earning $1.7M in 2017, thanks to a 7-figure score in December of that year, he stayed the course and amassed $6.6M in 2018, earning precious GPI points in all the right tournaments, to finish with over 4,000 points and the award! Kristen, from St. Catharines, Ontario, has been in the spotlight for quite some time. She and William travel the world and play the most prestigious poker […]

The MILLIONS Online has come to a close, and after smashing the $20,000,000 guarantee on Tuesday, play resumed on Wednesday with just 29 players left competing for the biggest prizes. When the dust settled, there was a chop between the first and second place players, with Manual “Sherparentao” Ruivo in 1st for $2,329,944 and Pim “ForMatherRussia” de Goede in 2nd for $2,309,995. One of the biggest stories of MILLIONS Online was the player who finished in 3rd place for $1,364,688, Slovenia’s “Scarmak3r”. He started his journey by winning a $5.50 satellite, and then played his way through the rest of the satellite tree to a Main Event ticket – and then rode that all the way to a huge 7-figure score!   Playground’s heartiest congratulations are reserved for frequent Playground tournament player William Blais, who came in 6th place for $655,050! William has been playing here as long as anyone […]

MILLIONS Online is the Online version of the MILLIONS poker series presented by partypoker LIVE, and when they announced that the guarantee of the event was going up from $5M (2017) to $20M (2018), people all around the poker world were skeptical, to say the least. Now, with late registration closed in Day 1E, it is clear that partypoker has managed to beat the guarantee by a healthy margin. The final prize pool in the event is more than $21.5M, which sets the new record for largest poker tournament by prize pool in history! Day 2 in the event gets underway at 2:00pm. Through the first 4 starting flights there were 568 players qualified, and Day 1E is set to add another 110+ players to the mix. Day 2 will play through 18 levels with blinds starting at 80K/160K and an ante of 20K. The chip average to start the […]