139 players will be making their way to the Tournament Hall at Playground in the next half hour to take their seats for the restart of the 8-Year Anniversary edition of the Playground 200. Play gets underway at 1:00pm.
Play will resume in level 15 with blinds of 1,500 and 3,000 and a big blind ante of 3,000. Considering that the chip average for the restart is 127K, the average stack resumes with 43bb – the tournament is plenty deep and will require some true poker skill to navigate successfully. The chip leaders – Frederic Gagne, Everol Davis, and Yannick Labattaglia – are all starting the day over 100bb deep!
The field is exceptionally strong for a tournament at this buy-in level. There are familiar names throughout the restart list. In addition to the leaders mentioned above, there are skilled and experienced players like Michael Lawson (95bb), Sergei Gurin (93bb), William Blais (88bb) – not to mention recent Playground 200 champ Mykyta Kurilenko (76bb).
Table 21 may prove to be a “one to watch” as seats 5 to 9 are filled with players with above-average stacks, including Joel Moreau (Seat 5, 214,000 chips), Mohamed Sabounji (Seat 6, 186,500 chips), William Blais (Seat 7, 262,000 chips), and Everol Davis (Seat 8, 309,000 chips).
Good luck to everyone playing today!