Here are a few photos of the remaining players in tonight’s 6-Max 50/50 Bounty as the bubble approaches.

There are just 31 players remaining in the 6-Max 50/50 Bounty tournament, and Remi Bourque has a solid lead as he leads the players towards the bubble, which will come when 26 players remain (25 get paid).

Tu Kham Tran opened the action with a raise to 6K, and after that point the stress grew steadily in the hand, eventually coming to a point. The player to his immediate left, Fan Jia, instantly shoved, and then Jan Alovera, the player to Fan’s left, re-shoved over the top. So far so good – action was back to Tu Kham… who went in the tank. He thought, then he asked for the count of one stack, then for the count of the other stack… and finally Fan called time – but arguably, too quickly after the second stack countdown… but before the time count got going, Tu Kham had called, his stack covering both of his opponents. All the cards were exposed.

Tu Kham:
Fan:
Jan: 1d

The flop came – everyone was standing now – and then the turn came: . Eruption! The dealer quietly laid out the on the river to give Tu Kham the boat. Fan was visibly upset with the outcome of the hand and with Tu Kham, but everything calmed down soon enough and a single player was left stacking all the chips – including two additional $100 bounties.

In a bounty tournament, some of the prize pool is awarded in the traditional fashion, to the top finishers in the tournament, while another portion is awarded via the exchange of bounty chips as players are eliminated. In this case, half of the prize pool is represented by these $100 bounty chips. The other half of the prize pool – 18,800 – will be awarded in the normal way according to the following table. 25 places will pay, with a min-cash of $170 and a top prize of $4,090.

David Cadoch was down to fewer than 4,000 in chips when he got it in against Daniel Pariard and Babak Forozandeh holding – but they were both still active in the hand, so we didn’t see David’s winning hand until Babak and Daniel had checked all the way through the board of . Against two players, David didn’t rate his Kings’ chances very highly once the Ace came on the flop – but there were no monsters under the couch and the Kings held.

On the very next hand, he shoved again for 12,100 and this time found action from Jonathan Poissant.

David:
Jonathan:

The in the window was good for David, although the middle :9 on the flop (along with the ) may have given him pause. The turn and river meant David was once again stacking chips… and though he’s still short of the average, his evening will at least continue for a little longer.

Cynthia Paquette took down a nice pot just a few hands after being moved to a relatively stacked table with two players in the 80-100K range.

She raised from middle position to 2,600 and found calls from Tu Khan Tran and Jan Alovera. Three players to the flop.

Flop:

The action flop provoked checks all around and the turn was dealt: .

Jan checked, and Cynthia bet 7,000 chips. Tu Kham folded and Jan made the call.

River:

The river was a bit of a brick, and Cynthia checked back after Jan opened with another check, and the cards were exposed.

Cynthia:
Jan:

Cynthia’s two-pair held as Jan couldn’t complete his flush and she stacked the chips to bring her stack to the tournament average.

There are an impressive 199 entries in tonight’s 6-Max Bounty tournament, and the 137 that remain after the first 6 levels of play are now taking their first break of the evening.

Here are a few photos of the early action.

Players have taken their seats, Tournament staff have made their introductory remarks, and dealers have started to shuffle and deal the first hands in tonight’s 6-Max 50/50 Bounty tournament. There are already 123 players entered with just under 2 hours of late registration left to go, so that number should grow considerably.

Good luck on the felts!

The final event in the 8-Year Anniversary series is almost certain to be a crowd-pleaser – the format ticks a lot of the “preferred” boxes all in one tournment. First of all, it’s a 6-Max tournament, which is the traditional Monday-night format here at Playground and has been popular since we opened in 2010. Even more – it’s also a bounty tournament – and not just any bounty tournament – it’s a 50/50 Bounty. Most players will know this already, but in a 50/50 bounty event, half of the player buy-in goes to the “traditional” prize pool and half of the buy-in goes to the special “bounty” prize pool. Each player will start the tournament with a single $100 bounty chip – and receive one more for each player they eliminate from the tournament.

Play gets underway at 7:00pm and players will have until 9:15pm to join the festivities. Players start with 20,000 in tournament chips and will play through 20 minute levels until a champion is crowned in the early hours of Tuesday morning.

Good luck to everyone playing tonight!

Event #7: $100 + $20 + $100 6-Max 50/50 Bounty

Monday December 17 at 7:00pm

$20,000 Guaranteed Prize Pool