LIVE EVENTS

The tournament is now heads up as it just lost Nicholas Soller, aka “Shooter McGavin”, as he is know on the cash tables at Playground. Nick is a solid grinder who has many final table appearances at Playground, including one last night. He tried his best this evening but in the end he got low on chips and put all of them in to the middle with , and he was called by Mark Fitzpatrick who had .  It started off looking good for Nick, but the flop came and Mark had flopped trip 9’s. The turn was the and river , sending Nick to the payout cage and leaving Mark Saddik and Mark Fitzpatrick heads-up, playing for $4,000.

Third place, Nick Soller, $6,925

Levon Dedeyan had lost some hands and was down to about 12 bigs when he decided to shove A7, only to be called by Marc Saddik holding QQ. Marc flopped an open end straight draw (9TJ) and Levon had a gut shot. The river was a brick and the table is now three handed.

Fourth place, Levon Dedeyan, $7,140

It took over hour to have the first bustout since the players reached an ICM deal but finally, it happened. Action folded to Steve Joudry in the cutoff who opened the pot, and Steve was called by Mark Fitzpatrick on the button.  Both blinds folded.

The flop came and both players got their money in.

Steve:
Mark:

Steve had flopped a flush and Mark had an over pair with a Queen high flush draw.
Turn: and Mark made his flush. The on river didn’t matter and Steve was sent to collect  his payout.

Fifth place, Steve Joudry, $6,788

The players asked the tournament staff to pause the clock so that they can take a look at the ICM chip chop numbers. The staff have mentioned to the players that as per partypoke LIVE event policy, 10% of the remaining prize pool must be reserved for the first place winner (the tournament must still play down to a champion), therefore, there would be $4,000 left over for the first place champion in addition to the ICM payout.

Here are the different stack sizes and corresponding ICM payouts:

After a brief discussion, all five of the remaining players have agreed to go ahead with the deal as per the payouts on the the above table.

The following players have just been sent to the rail, meaning that the final table is now being played.

• 9th place: Felix Sides, $1,380
• 8th place: Andrew Forest, $1,820
• 7th place: Frank Szelepcsenyi, $2,420
• 6th place: Jean-Sebastien Penven, $3,220

Here are the final players with their chip counts:

Here are the remaining five players:

Levon Dedeyan opened the action with a raise and was met by a 3-bet shove by Mehdi Badreddine. It wasn’t that much more to call and he was pot committed so Leveon accepted the challenge and both players tabled their cards.

Levon: 
Mehdi:

The flop came and Levon rolled his eyes in disgust as although he was ahead pre-flop, Mehdi hit his Jack. The turn was the which was safe for Mehdi but when the hit the river, Levon said something like “finally I hit my card when I am ahead”.

Mehdi Badreddine finished in 10th place for $1,030.

As we see in most tournaments once the bubble has burst, the shorter stacks in the room have been shoving away trying to double up their stacks, some have been successful, others have been sent to the rail.

Here are the latest to go to the cage to collect their payouts:

• 14th place: Thomas Brocato, $880
• 13th place: Jean-Philippe Lehoux, $960
• 12th place: Nick Nickoletopoulos, $960
• 11th place: Chad Cooms, $1,030

The bubble has just burst after a period of hand for hand that lasted more than 30 minutes. On table 35, Chris Arvanitis was one of the short stacks in the room when action had folded to him in the small blind. Taking a chance, he went ahead and shoved his stack, but the timing could not have been worse as Thomas Brocato woke up with a premium hand in the big blind.

Arvanitis: 
Brocato:   

Arvanitis was happy when the flop came 567, hitting his 5, but then had things go sour on him when an Ace hit the turn.

The players are now in the money and assured of at least $880 in 14th-15th spot.

While writing this post, Samuel Tsehai exited in 15th position.

Here is the prize list for this event:

After a lengthy period without any movement in the size of the field, Mark Fitzpatrick just capitalized on an opportunity and sent two players to the rail.

All the chips went in before the flop, following Fitzpatrick’s opening raise. There were two short stacks in the blinds; after the small blind moved in for just under 15,000, the big blind followed suit and put his stack in the middle. Although the player in the big blind had something closer to 20 big blinds, Fitzpatrick quickly tossed a single chip in the middle.

Hands were revealed to show that Fitzpatrick was in good shape against his opponents, but the board texture on the flop made for a significant sweat.

Fitzpatrick managed to dodge his opponents numerous outs and sent to players packing in the process.

The action has just resumed in level 13 of the 6-Max. The field is down to 36 players, and they are lead by Mehdi Badreddine, who is one of three players with more than 200,000 in chips at their disposal.

The action continues in level 11 of the 6-Max with less than half of the starting field still in contention. Instead of the cycles of loose and tight play seen in some other events, the 6-Max has had a consistent pace from the outset. In the same way that players joined steadily throughout the late registration period, the field has been shrinking at a similar rhythm.

The top 15 finishers will cash this event, but that milestone is still far in the distance. The chip average provides roughly 55 big blinds and, as the first ten levels has shown, the players are managing them carefully.

Here are some photos from levels nine and ten: