Daune Fernandez and Maxime Fortin Demers each had a little over 10 big blinds when they went at each other. Maxime open raised the pot, and was shoved on by Daune’s 359K. When everybody had gotten out of the way, Maxime made the call, with a stack of just over that amount.

Daune Fernandez:
Maxime Fortin Demers:

The flop came . Maxime was still alive, hoping to hit a pair in the near future, but the on the turn took care of that hope. As if to make sure he understood, the river showed the . Quad Overkill! Fernandez now has a little over 750K.

When the cards were tabled, Francis L sure thought his Frenzy run was nearly over. He had , and was facing Evangelos Kamperis’ and Tony Lei’s .

The flop brought no help to anyone, and Kamperis’ inner voice was probably screaming: ”Keep it clean!”. But then something unexpected happen. The turn brought a spade, and you could literally see the players’ heads turn to Francis’ hand, and back to the board. It was like everybody realized simultaneously that there was a runner-runner spade possibility. And there it was, the 4th spade on the river. Lei was taken out and Kamperis was crippled, while L bumped up to about 800K.

Day 2 of The $250 Frenzy has just come off a short break, and play is now into level 23. The night will finish upon the completion of 4 more 30-minutes levels, and the remaining players at that point will bag their chips onto Day 3.

Leading the way is Domenico Scalamogna, who is up above 1.3 million in chips now after a successful last few orbits. Another player to recently shoot up the leaderboard is Marco Caza, who holds second in chips with almost 1.25 million. Below is a table with the top 10 stacks entering level 23:

Photographs from level 22:

When we arrived at the table, there was about 400K in the pot, and the board was complete: . Éric Lévesque was facing an all-in bet from Sivasuthan Balasingam, and was trying to extract information from him, listing out loud the possible hands he could have, and looking at him from the corner of his eye. He went on to declare that he didn’t think he was good enough to fold his hand, which was just another way to get some kind of reaction from his neighbour. Sivasuthan finally put him on the clock, and after a few seconds, Éric called. Sivasuthan announced: ”Kings”, and Éric immediatly said: ”Kings are good.” He quickly showed queens, before throwing them into the muck, and counted out the 282K river bet. The total pot amounted to almost a million in chips!

Éric, after losing more than half his chips, most of which were fast earned in the previous level, congratulated Sivasuthan and told him it was well played, in true gentleman fashion.

Play recently hit hand-for-hand in The $250 Frenzy, as we were only one elimination from busting the money-bubble, and on the second of such hands an elimination occurred, triggering an applause from the rest of the 135 player field.

Congratulations to those who have secured a pay-day in this 3rd event of the Playground Poker Fall Classic, and good luck with the rest of the tournament!

Players are resuming play as these lines are being written, and we used the break to bring you a 12-player leaderboard. Some of these wealthy players – Sivasuthan Balasingam, Ruben Perceval, and Keven Desgagné – started the day well, and found a way to keep surfing the wave that they jumped on during their respective Day 1s. Others have simply managed to accumulate a lot a chip through the first 4 levels. Balasingam is our current chip leader, sitting on a cool 765K in chips. You can see him on the right, moments before defending his big blind from a late position raise.

Here is the 12-player list of leaders:

Eliminations are going really fast in the first levels of Day 2. The tournament staff has been busy, breaking more than 10 tables in an hour and a half. This obviously creates a lot of chip movement, some of which was in favor of Ruben Perceval (featured on the right), second in chips at the start of the day. He came into this Day 2 with 364,000 in chips, and is now at the 600K mark! This means that Kosta Papa is no longer our chip leader, but he’s still very healthy, conserving his stack of just under 500K.

Here are some pictures of the field, taken during levels 2-3:

Day 2 of Event 3, the $250 Frenzy, is now underway. 285 players are now looking ahead, trying to complete step 2 of this frenzied journey. Players will get in the money tonight (135 players are paid), but the big prizes are delivered tomorrow, on Day 3, and the top prize is $50,000.00.

But before all that, one needs to survive 12 levels of action-packed Day 2 action, which is what we have in line for you tonight. We will keep a close look on our chip leaders, as they try to fend off the attacks of their chip-hungry rivals.

Good luck to all!