LIVE EVENTS

Here we go! Congratulations to all the players who made it to the final table. The payouts are listed below the picture gallery.

The Playground 500 was yet another successful Power Weekend event that brought out a total of 260 entries, easily surpassing the $100,000 prize pool guarantee in the process.

Yesterday’s Day 2 action saw 59 players return to the felts to play for 10 45-minute levels. The field reached the money yesterday afternoon when 33 players remained. It took nearly an entire level of hand-for-hand play to dispense with the money bubble. Once the remaining players secured some prize money, their approach went from one of survival to chip accumulation, and the result was a series of quick eliminations that brought the field to the final table much more quickly than anticipated. When play concluded yesterday, only seven players remained.

The seven finalists will return today at 1:00pm to play until there is a winner. There is $27,880 in prize money waiting for the eventual champion so you can be sure that the players will arrive focused and determined to take this one down.

When play resumes, the remaining players will be seated according to the following table. Good luck to all!

The final table has been paused for the evening and the players will return tomorrow at 1:00pm to play down to a winner. The only casualty over the last few levels was Bryan Robitaille Fequet, exiting in eighth place and taking home $3,630.

There were many ups and downs as the final table played out and stacks were moving back and forth. Brestovac was almost up to 6,000,000 but in the end, he is coming back in second place with 2,140,000. John Rathbun is the current chip leader sitting on 3,415,000.

The players will have room to navigate as the shortest stack is still playing a little more than 20 big blinds, and with the ICM consideration on the payouts, players will be keeping in mind the the large pay jumps as they make their decisions to get involved in a hand or not.

Here are the chip counts for the final seven players:

Here are the remaining payouts that they are playing for:

Chip leader John Rathbun:

The 100,000 chips have now been introduced into play as the stacks are all massive.

Here are the seating draws and chip counts:

The final table has finally arrived in this weekend’s marquee event. Rong Xu had just been eliminated in 10th place and on the other table, Matt Hendler looked down at his cards and insta-shoved his 561,000 stack into the middle. Action folded to Goran Brestovac and once he glanced down at his hand he threw in a chip to flat call. The button and blinds folded their hands.

Hendler was ahead with his versus the of Brestovac. As fate would have it, Brestovac  liked the flop, having flopped a set of eights. The on the turn and on the river were of no hlp to Hendler and he went to the rail in ninth place. Brestovac  has been playing wrll and running good and just keeps adding to his stack as he remains in the lead.

The players just had another break and we were able to update the chip counts. Goran Bresovac is still in the lead and John Rathbun is hot on his heels in second spot.

The following players have recently now hit the rail:

There will be another break in about ten more minutes at which time we have the opportunity to update the chip counts. Looking at the tables, it is clear that Goran Brestovac, Jared McDonald and John Rathbun are currently in command of the field.

Recent bustouts include:

John Rathbun:

Goran Brestovac:

Jared McDonald:

The field has dropped to three eight-handed tables and there was a seating re-draw once there were 24 players left in the game. The next payout is $1,080 but of course everyone is playing for the first place prize of $27,880.

Some of the players remaining are: Sebastien Laroque, Gilbert Charles, Matthew Hendler, Ruben Perceval, John Rathbun, Goran “Go-Go” Brestovac, and Rong Xu.

Recent bustouts include: Remi Blanc, Zheng-Yi “Ziggy” Xie, Dan Edery, Stephen Leblanc, Stuart Taylor, Jonathan B., and Robert Cohen.

Here are a few photos of some of the remaining players:

Players just returned from the first break of the day and William Molson is in the lead sitting on almost 1 million chips (996,000). He is followed closely by Tony Wong (875,0000) and Remi Blanc (870,000). As the players are super deep (Molson is sitting on 83 bigs) there is still a ton of poker to be played and over the next few hours the lead can change at any time.

Here is the leaderboard at the moment:

William Molson:

Following 40 minutes of hand-for-hand play, the remaining field in the Playground 500 is now in the money.

There were some dramatic moments before the bubble finally burst, as the larger stacks tried to use their chip advantage to pressure their opponents. Most notable among them was when Tony Wong made a big call that put his tournament life at risk with top pair on an eight-high flop. His opponent in that hand, Ruben Perceval, had tried to push him off the pot with an open-ended straight draw, but Tony made the fearless call and faded Perceval’s outs to take down a pot worth roughly 500,000 in chips.

The bubble finally burst when Louis-Patrick Levros was forced to move all in for less than a big blind from under the gun. Having lost most of his chips on the previous orbit, he waited patiently with the hope that another player might be eliminated before the blinds came around but to no avail. Levros’ small all in picked up several callers. When one player made a flop bet to try to build a side pot, Levros knew he he was trailing and rose from this seat. Although Levros had live overcards, he was unable to conjure help from the poker gods on the turn or river and was eliminated on the money bubble.

As the Playground 500 enters the seventeenth level of play, the field is down to 35 players. This means that the players are only two spots from the money. The players have their eyes set on the five-figure prizes waiting for the top four finishers in this event, but securing at least the minimum cash is everyone’s first priority.

Here is the full prize list.

Although there is a long day ahead, the players in Day 2 of the Playground 500 jumped out of the gate and got off to a flying start. Several players hit the rail within minutes of the opening announcement, quickly reducing the field to less than 50 players.

The top 33 will reach the money and the stacks are still quite deep so expect the action to slow down considerably once the money bubble gets a little closer.

Check out this photo gallery from the first level of play.