LIVE EVENTS

The last starting flight of the Playground 100 saw 155 entries battle it out with the hopes of finding a bag for day 2. With over 3 million chips in play, as the evening progressed the stacks started to climb to the ceiling .

There were to be 16 qualifiers moving on to day 2, however the night ended in dramatic fashion with a super cooler that bolted George Kazarian to top of the pack just as another all in hand played out on the other table left in play. With at least three super short stacks as well as a few other very low stacks still in play, Peter Liakopoulos and George Kazarian who each had very healthy sized stacks had both picked up premium monsters and got their chips into the middle pre-flop.

Liakopoulos:
Kazarian:

The board ran out and since Kazarian had Liakopoulos covered, he was sent home just shy of the money. This is for sure a super cooler.

As there were knockout hands on both remaining tables at the same time, it also resulted in only 15 players qualifying for Day 2, instead of 16.

All players who have bagged chips for Day 2 are now in the money and guaranteed a min-cash. The three largest stacks from 1F are:

1. George Kazarian, 657,000 chips (131 big blinds)
2. Goran Brostovac, 583,000 chips (117 big blinds)
3. Rene-Philippe Noel, 268,000 chips (54 big blinds)

For a list of all of the combined Day 1 qualifiers, click here. (NB: Tonight’s qualifiers as well as the Day 2 seating chart will be added to the list sometime on Sunday)

Here are photos of some of the players found a bag tonight:

As anticipated, there have been many all ins taking place from the short stacks and in most cases, theyhave been able to pick up the dead money on the table. On table 35, Daniel Germain opened the action raising it up from 8,000 to 20,000, only to see Azaam Hakim move all in for 64,500. It took over a minute of tanking before Germain folded and Hakim picked up some valuable chips. Germain mentioned that he had a pair. Hakim said nothing.

There have of course been some calls taking place that didn’t work out so well for the short stacks as 12 players have exited since the last break. The chip leader from the last break, Goran Brestovac, has taken advantage of his skill and his big stack and is now sitting well over 400,000.

The field is thinning out but with still 31 players in contention, and with the final 16 moving on to Day 2, there is still a lot of poker left to play. Usually we see some small stack shoves at this point of the evening as well as some big stack aggression, so it will be interesting to see how the stacks go up and down until the players bag for the night.

The average is exactly 100,000 chips right now (20 big blinds) and there is a new leader that has emerged: Goran “Go-Go” Brestovac has taken a huge leap ahead of the other players and is playing a stack of 274,500 chips (55 big blinds). The second place runner-up is George Kazarian holding 184,500 chips (37 big blinds).

Here are the leaders from the break:

Still in contention are: Frederick Watson, Bruce Kraemer, Rene-Philippe Noel, Daniel Germain, Tina Howie, Costa Psallidas, Nick Nikoletopoulos, Edgar Avshalomov, to just name a few.

Recent bustouts include: Jonathan Tremblay, Alexandre Lauziere, Sebastien Proulx, Lukas Rubba, James Bridgeman, Francis Fortin-Chevalier, Dat Doan and Richard Sysko.

The players have just returned from the second break of the night and with the chip average just over 44,000 (27.5 big blinds), Frederick Watson has jumped into the lead with 136,200 chips (88 big blinds), followed closely by Bruce Kraemer holding 131,500 chips (82 big blinds).

Here are the current leaders:

Walking around the room there are now some large stacks on each of the tables. There will be a break coming up shortly which will allow us to count the stacks and see how is now in the lead. Stay tuned for the upcoming leaderboard!

The late registration and re-entry period has come to a close and there are 153 total entries (including 18 re-entries) which means that Day 1F will play down to the final 16 players (10% of the field) at which time they will bag for day 2.

With a total of 3,100,000 chips in play, the current chip average is just over 25,000 chips (50 big blinds). The leader at the first break is Tina Howie with 70,200 chips, good for 140 big blinds.

Here is the first leaderboard of the evening:

On table 37 Ranjeev M. had lost some chips but was lucky enough to find himself in a good situation. Action was opened in mid-position from 400 to 1,200  by Bastien Muselli, who found a call by Marc-Olivier Beauregard in the cutoff seat. When it was Ranjeev M.’s turn to act in the big blind, he pushed his chips forward, signalling an all in. Muselli asked for a count and when he found out it was only 7,400 in total, he made the call followed by a fold by Beauregard. The hands were tabled.

Ranjeev:
Muselli:

The board ran out and Ranjeev found a badly needed double-up just before the first break of the evening. There are 138 total entries so far and the late registration period will be ending shortly. We will also be producing the first leaderboard of the night in just a little bit.

The last starting flight is already up to 123 entries and it just keeps climbing which will help to make the total prize pool nice and juicy! Late registration and re-entry is open until the start of level seven at 10:15, so there is still lots of time to jump into the action.

Being Saturday night the many flat screen TV’s spread out in the tournament room have all of the games on, and of course the Montreal Canadiens game is on the main large screen TV. There is a couple who has been happily married for 25 years seated at the same table, and both are wearing their Hab’s jerseys. Nice!

Here are some of the other players seated in the room right now: