Day 1a of The $250 Frenzy – Event 3 of the Playground Poker Fall Classic presented by Partypoker.net – started at 11am and played through 14 30-minute levels before the remaining players bagged up their chips to take to Day 2. There were 148 entries in this first of 6 starting flights in Event 3, and at the end of the action today just 32 remained. Here are the final chip counts for everyone who has qualified for Day 2.

Just a reminder – as a next-day re-entry event, any player may enter multiple Day 1s, and if they are fortunate enough to qualify twice, only their largest stack will move forward to Day 2. And if you played in Day 1a but didn’t qualify, you can try again in any of the remaining starting flights.

The players in Day 1a have begun their second-last level of this flight and as the numbers have dwindled and blinds climbed, a few players have really started to put their foot on the accelerator as they pursue the goal of reaching Day 2 with a healthy stack.

Tanvir Ahmed continues to add to his stack and is managing to keep – and gain – momentum while playing a huge proportion of hands. He’s now playing over 240K.

A different approach is that taken by Claude Begin, who has been playing few hands – but making them count when he does. Claude is now up over 220K. Rounding out the top 3 at this point in the tournament is Patrick Chartrand, who has been steadily building his stack to approximately 180K.

The other movement to note is the move Thomas Lefort has made – after playing with a starting (or below) stack for most of the day, he has suddenly seemed to awake – and is now playing over 100K.

There’s a new chip leader in the tournament. Tanvir Ahmed – who also went deep in Event 1 – has climbed to over 115K in chips, leaving almost everyone else in the dust for the moment.

Carter Swidler (L) with Tanvir Ahmed (R)

The players are now back from their first break of the day in The $250 Frenzy Day 1a. During the break saw the final late registrants enter the tournament today, bringing the total number of entries up to 148 for this opening flight of the event.

During the break we also found a few players who have started to build oversized stacks, including Ray Haddad who already has over 67,000 tournament chips in his stack. Isham Yamani and Maxime Fortin Demers about both playing just under 50K each, which rates both of them among the leaders.

Be sure to consult the “Live Chip Counts” page via the link at right during the day to follow the leaders and several others throughout the day.