Event 11 Champion: Placide Junior Sanon

Event 11 in the Playground Poker Fall Classic was a $300 + $30 NL Hold’em 8-Max tournament that saw an astounding 259 players show up. A number of local and international pros and recreational players took to the felts in this tournament which, although moderately priced, awarded a cool $16,000 top prize.

There was no lack of action in the early and mid stages of the night, and we saw chips leaders go from hero to zero, or short stacks rise to the top in a matter of minutes. Once play arrived at the final table, the large pay-jumps seemed to have affected the game of the finalists, as every hand was meticulously played out and every option was deliberated on. It took several long levels for play to go from 9 to 6 players, and then in less than 20 minutes we saw the field drop from 6 to 1.

Martin Nadeau arrived at the final table as the big chip leader, but before long Placide Junior Sanon caught up and eventually took over as top stack. The two maintained their 7-figure stack while the rest of the players slowly got blinded out. Once play entered level 26, where the blinds were 80K/160K/a20K, the short stacks had no more room to work with and we started seeing a lot more all-ins followed by eliminations.

Event 5 champion Lukas Soucek was the first in the series of eliminations, and he was quickly followed by Gerald Leblanc, Han Qin and finally Alexander Matveev – leaving Placide and Martin heads-up. Although Placide started with a 2-to-1 chip lead, the two players (who apparently predicted that they would end up heads-up against one another when the field still had 10+ tables left) decided to do an even chop and play for the required $1,500 extra. They both therefore locked in $13,232.00 and went on to battle it out for the title.

Heads-up took all of one hand, as after an open from Martin in the small blind, all the chips went into the middle on the flop. With showing, Placide tabled and was up against . Placide caught a second pair on the turn, and then improved to a flush on the river to secure the victory, the additional payout that accompanied it, and a unique commemorative piece that every winner gets to take home during the Playground Poker Fall Classic – the Champion’s Trophy.