Somewhere near the middle of Day 1, Faisal Khan built an over-average stack, and from that moment on, he never lost control of the tournament. He steadily maintained a spot atop the leaderboard, and only fell below average once heads-up play began. It didn’t take long for him to regain the lead versus heads-up opponent Daniel Strelitz, and inevitably he found himself to be the sole survivor of a starting field of 269 entries. In the final hand of play, Faisal called the all-in of Daniel on the turn, with a board showing . He tabled for top pair, and had a few outs to fade to win the hand versus Daniel’s . With the river bringing the , Faisal won the pot and the tournament! Congratulations Faisal!
Poker
Fall Classic: Event 3 Champion, Raymond Kay
Raymond Kay outlasted 1,331 other competitors to emerge as the champion of Event 3, a $225 + $25 No Limit Hold’em Frenzy! In heads-up play against Jean-François Lescadres, Raymond saw his stack fall rather short before winning two big pots that eventually lead to his victory. In the last hand of play Raymond opened the action preflop from the button. On the flop, Jean-Francois check-raised Raymond and then called Raymond’s 3-bet shove. When they opened their hands, they saw they were virtually flipping. Raymond showed down and was against the flush and straight draws of Jean-Francois who was holding . The pair of tens improved to a straight with the running cards showing the and the and this was good enough to win the pot. Raymond earned a cool $50,000 for his first-place finish as well as a Playground Poker Fall Classic bracelet. Jean-Francois received a consolation prize of $34,270 – […]
Fall Classic: Event 1 Champion!
Congratulations to Mike Lafable who battled hard all day to emerge victorious in Event 1, The Wild $150, at the 2014 Playground Poker Fall Classic. Ahmad Baalbaki worked equally hard and managed to come in 2nd place. The player that Mike triumphed over was Ahmad Baalbaki. The two players’ voyage to the end could not have been more different. Where Ahmad was among the chip leaders from early on in Day 2, Mike was never among the leaders until the very end. And where Ahmad played a tight, aggressive game, Mike seemed to alternate between trying to open up the game by playing a lot of hands and then periods of extremely tight play as he needed to double up to survive. But, survive he did as did Ahmad and both players did very well to get to this point in the tournament. For his victory, Mike won the top prize of […]
Coming soon: the WPT Montreal and Playground Poker Fall Classic
The Playground Poker Fall Classic is just around the corner, and for the third year in a row, Playground Poker Club will be hosting the WPT Montreal! Players from around the world are set to return to the Montreal area – and one of them will join Jonathan Roy and Derrick Rosenbarger among the winners of the prestigious poker tournament. The full event schedule is now available on our Fall Classic and WPT Montreal Mini-site. The schedule has something to offer everyone, from the top touring professional all the way to the recreational player who wants to give big-time poker a try. As has become tradition during a Playground series, the Fall Classic kicks off with a low buy-in, multi-day tournament boasting an impressive $100,000 guarantee which is now dubbed The Wild $150 . This will be followed up by an amazing 6 Day-1 event called The $250 Frenzy which […]
The Bad Beat Jackpot – hit August 30th!
It’s almost as if it’s a new trend! For the second festival in a row, the Primary Bad Beat Jackpot has been hit on one of the cash tables, while the Main Event is in play. Alecsei Veitzman was holding when the flop came , but once the turn hit, his hand was second best to Geovanni Stephen’s straight flush, whose hole cards were . After the fell on the river and both players opened their hands, a rumble took over the entire club as the table realized what just happened: the Primary Bad Beat Jackpot of $277,243 was just hit! Along with this Bad Beat Jackpot comes some news starting immediately, there are NEW BBJ rules in effect. In a nutshell, the new Primary Bad Beat Jackpot starts at a whopping $150,000 and the minimum qualifying hand goes down every 3 weeks. As well, the Secondary Bad Beat Jackpot […]
News from the 2014 WSOP Main Event
The WSOP Main Event is well underway in Las Vegas, and Playground Poker Club would like to extend a hearty Good Luck to a few of our friends. Our list includes Players Club members as well as a few other players we have built relationships with over the years – some of them went deep in a big event we’ve thrown, or they come to all of our big events, or they’re regulars or staff at the club. Good luck to everyone! Day 2AB: Players Club – Antonio Esfandiari, Chanracy Khun, Jeff Gross, Valerie Ross. Other friends – Mukul Pahuja, Tony Dunst, Samuel Chartier, Michael Malm, Laurence Grondin, Yann Dion, Vincent Jacques, Tim Reilly, Alim Perales, Sorel Mizzi, Ryan Rivers, Mike Linster, Eric Afriat, John Pentefountas, and Gaya Louali. Day 2C: Players Club – Jonathan Roy, Gavin Smith. Other friends – Jonathan Duhamel, Jay Kastner, Derek Lerner, Carter Swidler, Jeff […]
Announcing Antonio Esfandiari’s Survivor Series
Antonio Esfandiari’s Survivor Series includes THREE Survivor tournaments at different buy-ins: $100 + $10, $200 + $20, and $300 + $30. Survivor events are a great way to build your bankroll: if you are still in it when just 10% of the field is left, you take home an even share of the prize pool! In addition to these events there will be a $500 + $50 No Limit Hold’em Re-entry tournament (with a standard payout structure) that’s sure to generate a huge prize pool. The winner of Event 2 (the $500 + $50 event) will come back to Playground Poker Club on Sunday July 27th at 5pm to play a Heads-Up match against Antonio Esfandiari for a 2014 WPT Montreal entry! Event 1: Thursday July 24th at 8:00pm: $100 + $10 Survivor* (10% of field is paid out). Event 2: (Day 1) Friday July 25th at 12:00pm: $500 + […]
Series Wrap-up: PokerStars Canada Cup 2014
The 2014 PokerStars Canada Cup has wrapped up in historic fashion at Playground Poker Club in Kahnawake, QC. The series, held from May 16th to 28th, offered poker players 12 events, including the $3,300 Main Event, the $10,400 High Roller, and the always huge $150 Re-entry kickoff event that got the ball rolling over two weeks ago. Overall, the PokerStars Canada Cup was a big success as over 3,200 players competed for over $2.8M in prizes over the course of the 13-day series. The biggest surprise in the whole series came at the end of the Main Event. Play on the final table started quickly, with the first elimination of the day coming just 4 hands into the day, and it proceeded quickly enough through eliminations in 9th through 5th place. When play got down to 4 players, though, things slowed to a crawl as two players Robert Notkin and Vincent […]
PokerStars Canada Cup Satellite Update
The PokerStars Mega Overlay satellite was held last weekend and when the dust settled on Sunday, a whopping 34 seats to the Main Event of the PokerStars Canada Cup were awarded! This includes 24 seats that were added from the 599 total entries in the 3 starting flights plus the 10 seats added to the prize pool by PokerStars. These 34 seats double the number of live satellite seats that have been awarded to date and there are still 24 seats guaranteed in upcoming live satellites. But that’s not all there have also been 90 seats (so far) won in online satellites held by PokerStars. All tolled, the Main Event is likely to have at least 200 total satellite entries! Don t miss this fantastic new event at Playground Poker play your way to a ticket in one of the satellites still to come! Live Satellite Schedule (May 5th to […]
The Bad Beat Jackpot has been hit!
As if Day 1a of the WPT Canadian Spring Championship and the kickoff of the final table of Event 4 of the Playground Poker Spring Classic weren t enough, today just after 3pm the record-setting Primary Bad Beat Jackpot was won on Table 13, a $1-$2 No Limit Hold’em cash table! The table had 9 people playing when the Jackpot hand was hit. The button was on Seat 5. Action folded to the player in Seat 1, who raised to $16. The player in Seat 2 called, as did the player on the button in Seat 5. The flop was dealt: . Seats 1 and 2 both checked and Seat 5 led out for $11. Both players called. The turn came and again Seats 1 and 2 both checked. Seat 5 bet again $20 this time, and both players called. The river was the and Seat 1 led out with […]
The Primary BBJ – now over $350K!
Last week the Primary BBJ moved into record territory, and the Primary Bad Beat Jackpot has continued to climb through the weekend to over $350000! This is a record at Playground Poker Club, and the next winner of the jackpot is on track for a huge payday! To put that in perspective, a player at the table who isn’t even involved in the jackpot hand will stand to win almost $10K when it hits! The minimum qualifying hand is now at Quad 5s and on March 12 it will go down to Quad 4s, where it will stand for the following 2 weeks. Of course as the Primary BBJ grows, so does the secondary BBJ with the lowest hand requirement: Aces over Kings (pair in hole cards). It’s already over $70K – and so even the smaller jackpot now will lead to pretty impressive payouts! So come on out to […]
Live Stream Archive of the 2013 WPT Montreal
The 2014 Playground Poker Spring Classic including the WPT Canadian Spring Championship is just around the corner, and this week we found some footage on YouTube that should whet your appetite for our next big event! Although there is no official archive of the Live Stream of last November’s WPT Montreal, a friendly robot found that an archive had been recorded nonetheless. We’ve made it available in 5 parts on our Event Page for last year’s event: 2013 Playground Poker Fall Classic including the WPT Montreal. Enjoy!