…both Jeff Gross and Gavin Smith have been eliminated. We missed the hand but Gross had lost a big portion of his stack before the last redraw to Darren Elias. Shannon Shorr is stacking the rest.
Meanwhile Gavin Smith got it all in holding pocket nines – only to run into pocket aces.
Gross was out in 17th, Smith in 16th.
Some rough chip counts with 20 left:
The High Roller event has reached its first break of the evening and there have been a few more eliminations since Phil Laak went down at the outset of play today.
There are 20 players remaining and when they return from break blinds will be 500/1K/a100. The chip average is 79.5K. There will be a full seating redraw when the tournament moves to 2 tables/18 players.
The prize pool and payouts have been announced for the High Roller event. There were 53 players total which give a total prize pool of $257,040.00. This will be distributed according to the following table.
| Finish | Prize |
|---|---|
| 1 | $100,250.00 + Championship Belt |
| 2 | $59,122.00 |
| 3 | $35,987.00 |
| 4 | $25,705.00 |
| 5 | $20,564.00 |
| 6 | $15,422.00 |
The Championship Belt for the High Roller Event at the Playground Poker Spring Classic!
Phil Laak has been eliminated from the tourney. He started the day as one of the short stacks, but couldn’t double.
Bruce Buffer is just one of the 28 players who are about to get started with Day 2 of Event 8 in the Playground Poker Spring Classic, A $5000 + $300 No Limit Hold’em High Roller tourney that started last night.
Along with Bruce we’ll see Phil Laak, Gavin Smith, Jeff Gross and some other great players in this, the highest buy-in tourney in this year’s festival.
When Event 8 got started at 7pm on Monday evening there were around 20 players who bought in immediately and were seated as level 1 began. There were a mix of players – well-known poker pros like Players Club members Gavin Smith and Phil Laak, local pros like Players Club member Christopher McClung and Pascal Lefrancois, and players who had been at the Spring Classic since the beginning and had played multiple events at various buy-in levels (i.e., Danny Boyaci and David Ormsby).
Throughout the evening players continued to jump in, joining the talented field and forcing some early table additions and a lot of “balancing up” as tables were added until eventually there were 52 total players representing a wide cross-section of poker talent. Players Club member and WPT Montreal third-place finisher Jeff Gross joined as soon as he was eliminated from the WPT Canadian Spring Championship, as did Shannon Shorr (who min-cashed the main event) and Tyler Reiman (the unfortunate bubble player in the WPT event).
Eventually the field reached 53 runners who played through 7 hour-long levels on Day 1. Of these 52, 29 remain in the tournament to return for Day 2 at 4pm today.
| First Name | Last Name | Seat | Chip Count |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bruce | Buffer | Table 26 – Seat 3 | 18050 |
| Christopher | McClung | Table 21 – Seat 2 | 85550 |
| Daniel | Ghionoiu | Table 25 – Seat 6 | 20600 |
| Darren | Elias | Table 21 – Seat 6 | 50300 |
| David | Ormsby | Table 21 – Seat 4 | 51525 |
| Farid | Jattin | Table 26 – Seat 5 | 70775 |
| Gabriel | Frank | Table 21 – Seat 7 | 32500 |
| Gavin | Smith | Table 25 – Seat 7 | 60225 |
| Guillaume | Rivet | Table 22 – Seat 4 | 35550 |
| Hank | Sitton | Table 21 – Seat 5 | 53875 |
| Jean-Christophe | Ferreira | Table 22 – Seat 1 | 44125 |
| Jeffrey Dale | Gross | Table 26 – Seat 1 | 147500 |
| Jesse | Yaginuma | Table 25 – Seat 4 | 58525 |
| John | Andress | Table 26 – Seat 7 | 47875 |
| Jonathan | Jaffe | Table 22 – Seat 5 | 66000 |
| Jonathan | Little | Table 22 – Seat 8 | 74675 |
| Kerry | Shears | Table 22 – Seat 2 | 61525 |
| Mark | Radoja | Table 22 – Seat 7 | 15800 |
| Martin | Raus | Table 21 – Seat 3 | 20850 |
| Matthew | Giannetti | Table 25 – Seat 2 | 57525 |
| Nicholas P | Grippo | Table 25 – Seat 5 | 152925 |
| Osman | Soubra | Table 21 – Seat 1 | 24000 |
| Pascal | Lefrancois | Table 25 – Seat 1 | 67875 |
| Phil | Laak | Table 26 – Seat 4 | 18000 |
| Philippe | Kerri | Table 26 – Seat 6 | 35800 |
| Setrak | Suloukji | Table 22 – Seat 6 | 82625 |
| Shannon | Shorr | Table 22 – Seat 3 | 81925 |
| Sylvain | Siebert | Table 26 – Seat 2 | 41225 |
| Tommy | Vedes | Table 25 – Seat 3 | 17900 |