Event 4 is coming back from a short break, and with 29 players remaining, here is how the chips are spread out:

Table 60

• Seat 1. Maxime Laberge – 140K
• Seat 2. Benoit Jean – 309K
• Seat 4. Kyle Hartree – 85K
• Seat 6. Kelly Smith – 185K
• Seat 7. Daniel Smouha – 191K
• Seat 8. Ruben Perceval – 79K
• Seat 9. Justin Leeson – 133K

Table 61

• Seat 1. Peter Kavouras – 101K
• Seat 2. Jerome St-Onge – 410K
• Seat 3. Peter Labib – 317K
• Seat 4. Johnathan Neil Hansmeyer – 95K
• Seat 5. Michael Malm – 410K
• Seat 6. Michael David Yeomans – 330K
• Seat 7. Jonathan Theriault – 165K
• Seat 9. Jeff Cote – 225K

Table 64

• Seat 1. Faizel Satchu – 304K
• Seat 3. Larry Farr – 148K
• Seat 5. Kevin MacDonald – 118K
• Seat 6. Gary Yeghiayan – 98K
• Seat 7. Ramzi Karam – 172K
• Seat 8. Trieu Dung Hong – 70K
• Seat 9. Alex Fiorani – 89K

Table 65

• Seat 3. David Baba – 180K
• Seat 4. Yannick Labattaglia – 85K
• Seat 5. Jeffrey Cormier – 155K
• Seat 6. Karo Lyne Dufour – 235K
• Seat 7. Jason Griffith – 190K
• Seat 8. Mark Fitzpatrick – 295K
• Seat 9. Jordan Martin – 170K

There will be a full seating redraw at 27 players.

Event 4 has been reduced to just 4 tables, which means that the bubble is fast approaching. With 32 players left in the field, 23 of them will make the money, while the rest will be sent home empty handed.

Here is a gallery from last level, when the field was still 50 players:

Kliment Tarmakov

Costantinos Psallidas

Johnathan Neil Hansmeyer

Alex Fiorani

Benoit Perras

Karo Lyne Dufour

Victor Adams

Benoit Jean

Larry Farr

Paul Naccarato

Pierre Paul Paulin

Justin Leeson

Kelly Smith

Maxime Laberge

Jeffrey Cormier

Daniel Smouha

Kyle Hartree

Anesti Kocini

Jerome St-Onge

Michael Malm

Yan Touchette

Jeff Cote

Martin Messier

Reuben Perceval

Wafic Fala

Guillaume Tremblay

Patrick Dubois

Peter Labib

Kevin MacDonald

Kieu Hoa Lam

Faizel Satchu

Gary Yeghiayan

Andrew Humphrey

Daniele Micallef

Peter Kavouras

Teodor Gheorghe

Martin Giguere

Micah Johnson

Jiacheng Zhang

Michael David Yeomans

Ramzi Karam

Jason Griffith

Jonathan Theriault

David Baba

Deron Noksana

Yannick Labattaglia

Mark Fitzpatrick

Trieu Dung Hong

Jordan Martin

Michael Malm started after the last break just behind the chip leaders in the 190K-200K range, but this level he has put the pedal to the metal and has built his stack up over 600K and is now the chip leader in the event by a wide margin.

Players in Event 4 are on their first break of the day so we took the opportunity to find the chip leaders at this point in the tournament.

1. Maxime Laberge – 280K
2. Michael David Yeomans – 270K
3. Jeff Cote – 240K
4. Benoit Jean – 220K
5. Mark Fitzpatrick and Ramzi Karam (tie) – 210K

Despite the fact that there weren’t too many short stacks to start the day the play has gotten off to a blistering pace as 11 players have been eliminated in the first level today.

One of the side-effects of this action is that two of the players who led most of the way yesterday while playing on the same table, Maxime Laberge and Jeff Cote, have been reunited as Jeff’s first table today was broken.

Larry Farr

Jeff Cote

Wafic Fala

Maxime Laberge

Benoit Jean

Jeff Cote demonstrates proper table change technique

Michael Malm

Jean-Louis Arseneau

Danielle Micallef

Deron Noksana

The players have taken their seats and play has begun for Day 2 of the $500 + $50 No Limit Hold’em tournament. There are 70 players still in the action to start the day, and although a couple of those players are starting short stacked, the field overall is pretty deep so there should be a lot of play over a sustained period today.

The TD has announced that although the tournament was scheduled to continue for 14 levels today, he has decided that due to the field size and other factors they would play for a minimum of 10 levels today but perhaps not all 14 as scheduled.

Event 4 started with 221 players and at the end of the 13 levels played through Day 1, just 70 players remain. Day 2 begins at 1pm tomorrow afternoon (Wednesday March 26).

Here is the seating draw for players. You can sort this table by chip count or by name.

The TD called for dealers to deal 3 more hands a few minutes ago and now that all tables have completed the day, the players are bagging up their chips. We’ll publish full chip counts and the seating draw for Day 2 later this evening.

Players have begun the final level to be played today and there are a couple of interesting stories beginning to emerge.

First, two of the three top chip leaders in the tournament at this point are at the same table. Mark Fitzpatrick and Jeff Côté – both of whom have made deep runs or won major events at Playground in the past – are both hovering around stacks of about 225K in chips. They are the two clear leaders in the event at this point, and that table (Table 54) could prove dangerous for anyone who is moved there.

The second interesting story is that the third leader at this point – Ramzi Karam – is fresh off a very deep run in Event 1 in this series.

Mark Fitzpatrick

Ramzi Karam

Jeff Côté

Event 4 in the Playground Poker Spring Classic is a $500 + $50 No Limit Hold’em tournament being held over three days from March 25 to 27, 2014. A total of 221 players registered for the event building a prize pool of $107,185.00 which will be distributed according to this table.