Day 3 of Event 2 has come to an end, and after nearly two hours of heads-up play, Marko has come out as our tournament champion! He will collect $20,309 and a Playground Poker Fall Classic bracelet for his first place finish!
Congratulations Marko! Playground Poker Club truly is ‘For Players, By Players’!
Event 2 Champion: Marko, $20,309
2nd place: Troy Hamilton, 17,665$
After a long heads-up battle in which only $2,800 – and the bracelet – was at issue, in the end Marko emerged victorious over Troy Hamilton. Troy played an extremely strong tournament and was consistently among the chip leaders since early in Day 2, and his strong play continued to the final table where he quickly amassed a huge stack.
At the same time as he was building up his stack, though, Marko was building an impressive stack of his own. Still, by the time it got two-handed, Troy had a chip advantage and looked to be in control of the affair.
What happened, though, went off-script. Marko played a relentless and extremely patient game and seemed to drive Troy kind of crazy with his patience, until in the end Marko wore him down and took all of the chips.
1st place: Marko, $20,309 and the championship bracelet
2nd place: Troy Hamilton, $17,665
Marko and Troy Hamilton have now been playing heads up for over 90 minutes with no sign of a let up from either player.
The players are taking well-earned 10-minute break. At the break, Marko is working with 11.7M chips while Troy has 5.8M.
3rd place: Evgeni Ozadovski, $16,640
4th place: Michael D Brown, $15,575
The remaining 4 players have reached a deal in Event 2. They have agreed to reserve $2,800 from the prize pool plus the bracelet for the winner and chip-chop the rest of the prize pool.
This results in the following payout structure:
Play continues…
Photos of the final four players in Event 2.
Alain Boucher has also been eliminated.
5th place: Alain Boucher, $7,200
Action is fast and furious. We got to the table as Marko was stacking a monster pot – and learned right away that he was stacking two players’ entire stacks.
From what the players told us, Christopher Rassi open shoved UTG and Marko flat called. It folded around to Russel Turner, who went all-in – and Marko called the bet and flipped over pocket AA. Russel held KK and Christopher’s initial shove was made holding KQ (suited).
Two hands later, Alexandros Fixmer shoved on a 
flop and Michael D Brown called. Alexandros held :
for bottom pair, and Michael turned over 
for no pair. The turn fixed that problem the 
put him in the lead to stay as the 
didn’t do anything to help Alexandros’ hand.
6th place: Alexandros Fixmer, $5,255
7th place: Russel Turner, $3,830
8th place: Christopher Rassi, $2,800
Christopher Shakell has been eliminated in 9th place after a hand between he and Troy Hamilton.
Chris raised to 385K from middle position, and Troy, 2 seats to his left (cutoff) 3-bet to 925K. Michael Brown tanked for a while in the big blind, but eventually folded so action returned to Chris. After a few moments of thought he quietly said, “All in” – and Troy couldn’t call fast enough.
Chris turned over 
while Troy was way ahead holding 
.
The flop was reasonably safe: 
while the turn of 
gave Chris some additional outs. Unfortunately for him, the river card was a 
and Troy’s Kings held.
It took a while to count down the stacks because the players started the hand with very similar stack sizes. It turned out that Troy was playing 2.690M chips while Chris had slightly fewer chips – 2.615.
9th place: Christopher Shakell, $2,040
