LIVE EVENTS

On table 34 action was all in pre-flop between Paul El-Khouri and Jean St. Martin, and both players were sitting on large stacks, although El-Khouri had St. Martin covered. When the players flipped over their cards, the entire table smiled as both players had pocket aces, and it looked like one of those “waste of everyone’s time, chopped pots”.  There were two diamonds on the flop, and on the turn everyone on the table went silent when a third diamond hit the board. El-Khouri was holding the ace of diamonds and St. Martin cringed and tensed up, thinking “OMG”. Thankfully for him, the river was a blank and the pot was chopped.

Tournament players know the routine: there is always a sweat when there is an all in. This is definitely a situation where in the end, St. Martin was happy to chop.

Paul El-Khouri

Jean St. Martin

The field is now down to less than half of the entries but there is still a long way to go as the night plays on until only 10% of the field remains, which means with 161 total entries, play will stop when there are just 17 players left.

The play has become a little bit more cautious over the last few levels and although Marc-Antoine Coté made it up as high as 170,000 just a little while back, he did lose a few hands but remains in the lead nursing a 131,700 chip stack. Benoit Desbiens (second in chips at the first break) and Jason Teurquety (fifth in chips at the first break) are hot on his heels and doing their best to overtake Coté; only time will tell if they can surpass him.

Here is the latest leader board:

Marc-Antoine Coté

With the blinds at 500/1,000, Jason Teurquety raised it up in the cut off position to 3,100 and was called by Charli Azoulay on the button. When it came back around to Nicolas Simon who had initially tried to limp in, he moved his stack all in for about 20,000. Teurquety made the call and Azoulay let go of his hand and got out of the way.  The cards were tabled:

Teurquety:
Simon:

Teurquety was way ahead and although Simon was hoping for a miracle double up, it wasn’t to be found on the board.

Late registration has come to a close and the turnout tonight has been great; there are a total of 161 entries (with 24 re-entries) and with still another four starting flights left to go, it looks like this event is going to be a huge success!

With the average chip stack hovering just a little bit over 25,000 at the first break, a total of seven players were able to build stacks north of 50,000. One player, Marc-Antoine Coté, managed to pull away from the rest of the pack and amass almost triple the chip average and currently sits on a whopping 93,200 chips!

Here are all of the leaders at the first break:

The room is filling up nicely and with already 144 entries (including 14 re-entries), if this is any type of indication of what to expect, the prize pool will be really sweet for such a modest priced buy-in.

Here are some of the players grinding it out on the felt tonight:

Welcome to the first starting flight of Event #3, the $100 + 10 Playground 100. This is the first live flight of five Day 1’s (there was an online Day 1 last Sunday on partypoker that attracted 27 runners, of which three advanced to day Day 2). Players start with 20,000 chips and play until the field is down to just 10% of the the total entries. Blind levels are 20 minutes long and players have unlimited re-entry available until the end of the the late registration period at the start of level 7 at 9:15pm.

There is a guaranteed $50,000 prize pool, and based on the experience of previous Power Weekends, an affordable event like this could see the prize pool swell to a much larger amount.

Just in case you can’t make tonight’s flight, here is the schedule for the remaining four day 1 starting flights:

• Day 1B: Friday July 19 at 12:00pm
• Day 1C: Friday July 19 at 7:00pm
• Day 1D: Saturday July 20 at 11:00am
• Day 1E: Saturday July 20 at 7;00pm

Day 2 will take place on Sunday July 21 at 3:00pm and will play down to a winner.