As play has continued we were able to look over the players’ shoulders to get updated counts for the entire table.

[eztable width=80% colwidth=27%|33%|20% colalign=center|center|center]
Table – Seat,Name,Chip Count [attr sort=desc]
Table 38 – Seat 1,Daniel Hamelin,”1,300,000″
Table 38 – Seat 2,Jason Duval,”2,000,000″
Table 38 – Seat 3,Rodney Ramalho,”2,600,000″
Table 38 – Seat 4,Levi Stevens,”1,100,000″
Table 38 – Seat 5,Norman Doucette,”1,300,000″
Table 38 – Seat 6,Hugo Fontaine,”1,300,000″
Table 38 – Seat 7,Nicolas Bastien,”2,100,000″
Table 38 – Seat 8,Sergio Vigano,”1,500,000″
Table 38 – Seat 9,Daniel Charette,”1,000,000″
[/eztable]

It didn’t take long for us to have our first casualty on the final table, as Quyen Dao lost his stack in a two-part process. In the first hand, Quyen open-shoved just over 600,000 from middle position, and was called by Levi Stevens in the big blind, who only had 535,000.

Quyen:

Levi:

The flop was awful for Quyen, as the board cut his hopes. Levi won the hand by making a straight flush, as the hit the river (the turn was a meaningless ).

Two hands later, Quyen was all-in with his remaining 140,000, and once again in a tough spot, as his was called by the of Rodney Ramalho. Much like the previous hand, the board was of no help to Quyen, showing , and just like that his Main Event was over.

10th place: Quyen Dao – $7,120

Here is the final table draw for the last 10 players active in the Main Event of the Playground Winter Festival. The next payout (for 10th place) is $7,120.00 and then every finishing position represents a pay jump.

[eztable width=60% colwidth=30%|30% colalign=center|center]
Table – Seat [attr sort=asc],Name
Table 38 – Seat 1,Daniel Hamelin
Table 38 – Seat 2,Jason Duval
Table 38 – Seat 3,Rodney Ramalho
Table 38 – Seat 4,Levi Stevens
Table 38 – Seat 5,Norman Doucette
Table 38 – Seat 6,Hugo Fontaine
Table 38 – Seat 7,Nicolas Bastien
Table 38 – Seat 8,Sergio Vigano
Table 38 – Seat 9,Daniel Charette
Table 38 – Seat 10,Quyen Dao
[/eztable]

Shawn Martel was just shy of 10 big blinds when he moved in his last 375,000 from the button, after Nicolas Basile had opened to 90,000 from UTG, and found himself in a race.

Shawn:

Nicolas:

With the window card showing a 9, Shawn had little to no hope of surviving, as the dealer spun out the board of . With that elimination, we are now at the final table of the Main Event of the Playground Winter Festival!

11th place: Shawn Martell – $7,120

Michael Antimisiaris has been eliminated in 12th place, which means we’re one elimination away from the final table in the Main Event of the Playground Winter Festival

12th place, Michael Antimisiaris, $7,120.00

Serge Pouliot – better known as Momess – has been eliminated in 14th place by Daniel Hamelin. Momess had lost about half of his starting stack today through the early action, and by the time his elimination hand came along, he had just around 400K left.

In the hand, Daniel made a small raise preflop which Momess called, and then the pattern repeated on each street as the dealer spread and finally – which was the action card. Daniel made a small bet again, and Momess went all-in – and Daniel called as quickly as humanly possible, flipping over for a full house compared with Momess’ King-high flush from .

14th place: Serge Pouliot, $5,820.00

Just three hands after Anthony Khoury was eliminated, Michael Noor has also reached the end of his tournament.

Quyen Dao has been moved to table 37 to keep them balanced at 7 players each.

15th place: Michael Noor, $5,820.00

Jordan Miraglia was crippled after losing to Shawn Martell’s quad fives, and a few hands later he was eliminated by Nicolas Belcourt.

This was the second player eliminated on table 38, so Nicolas Bastien was moved from Table 37 to keep the tables balanced. However, on the very next hand, Anthony Khoury was eliminated, so now Table 37 is one player short.

16th place: Anthony Khoury, $4,990.00

17th place: Jordan Miraglia, $4,990.00

Shawn Martell has just doubled through Jordan Miraglia to build his stack to over 1.4M.

We missed the beginning of the hand but the chips were all committed on the flop of and Shawn had flopped a set holding , while Jordan had just the over pair . The on the turn gave Shawn quads and Jordan was drawing dead.

Lest anyone think that things have been quiet because there have been no eliminations – nothing could be further from the truth. Chips are flying around the table and people are looking for every opportunity to eliminate players. So far, though, there have been more double ups than eliminations – a condition that will not continue indefinitely.

Nicolas Bastien has doubled through Levi Stevens and at almost the identical moment, Daniel Charette doubled through Rodney Ramalho.

Nicolas doubled from 280K when his outdrew Levi’s on a board reading , while Daniel took a more circuitous route when his faced Rodney’s . Rodney took a commanding lead on the flop of but the on the turn put Daniel in the lead and the on the river just sealed it.

Play has been very active in the early going. If it continues like this, we’re in for quite a ride today.