Will Molson

One of the players who made it out to today’s tournament is Will Molson, who is a very accomplished player with a long record of success. As we mentioned earlier, however, the whole tournament is filled with good, experienced players – maybe not with Will’s resume, but not lacking for experience overall.

Will just won a big pot against two good players. He opened to 2,400 and found two callers: Nick-Real Seide on the button and Noeung Troeung playing from the big blind. The flop was dealt: . Noeung was first to act and decided to check – and the action checked around after him. The turn was the and Noeung chose to bet: 3,500 chips. Will thought momentarily and made the call, and Nick called as well.

The river was – definitely an action card. Noeung slowed down – check. Will then bet 11,500 and was quickly facing Nick-Real’s all-in bet (Noeung instal-folded following the shove). Will made the call and confidently turned over for the nut flush while Nick-Real dejectedly turned over for the straight – which was no good. Will moved to somewhere around the 90K mark on the hand – definitely a solid stack size for this point in the tourney.

A note on the tournament format today: play is now 9-handed on all tables after a short transition period following the close of late registration.

A few players have taken a solid lead in the tournament through 8 levels of play, but none of the players in today’s $500 + $50 Deepstack tournament have anything close to an insurmountable lead. The field in this event is made up of a significant number players who would feel perfectly comfortable in events at any price – so it’s hardly surprising that chips are very tough to win and very tough to hold on to once they’ve made it to your stack.

When registration closed in the $500 + $50 Deepstack tournament being held today, there were a total of 103 players which contributed to a total prize pool of $49,955. This will be distributed among the top 11 players according to the following payout table.

The players in the $550 Deepstack tournament have just returned to the tables from their first break of the day, and with the end of the break came the end of the late registration period. With all of the players accounted for, then, there are a total of 103 players in the event – 99 of whom remain in action at the moment.

We did survey the tables to try to find an early chip leader but to this point in the tournament, no one seems to have built up a very big stack – which is understandable considering that only 4 players have been eliminated so far. By the next break, however, it’s pretty certain that there will be a few big leaders in the tourney!

Today is the third event in the Playground Anniversary Series, and the last tournament before tomorrow’s 5-Year Extravaganza! The tourney today is a $500 + $50 NL Hold’em Deepstack tournament – and we could have added “Freezeout” to the name as well, because there are no rebuys or re-entries today – everyone who joins the event will play one buy-in.

Players start today with 25K in chips and blinds will be 30 minutes long throughout the tournament. It’s a single day event, so play will continue today and tonight until a winner emerges!

Today’s starting time of 11am is always a bit of a challenge for poker players, who tend to keep later hours, and so far there are 38 early bird players in the tourney. Late registration is open until the end of the break after level 4 – in other words, until 1:15pm – and we expect a good number of players to jump in during late reg.