February Power Weekend News

The last Event of the Power Weekend was a $300 + $30 NL Hold’em 6-max tournament. This very popular format attracted 91 players, and created a prize pool of $26,481. The buy-in was big enough to attract some sharks, but affordable enough to have many of our everyday tournament players in the field, making for an interesting dynamic.

The 6-max format always creates loads of action, and this edition was no exception. Many of the early leaders did not manage to make the payouts, including Nader Ammar, who had over 200K with 30 players left. His all-out style was displayed one too many times, and he suffered a fate that was shared by many tonight.

The 7-handed final table was formed with some well-known deep-run subscribers. William Blais has countless final table appearances at Playground, many of which were from high profile tournaments. Michael Levy and Sébastien labbé are also well established on the local tournament scene, while Carl Doyon, although he does not play as often as he used to, always makes his presence felt.

Play was solid on the final table, and everybody was standing their ground, but the blinds eventually caught up and gambles were dictated. When Blais left, our 2 finalists were about even, and decided to reduce the variance considerably by securing $6,000 each, leaving $1,431 on the table for the eventual winner.

The heads-up match lasted about 20 minutes. Michael Levy was playing solid, never committing too much, yet keeping the pressure. He took the lead and did not let go. In the end, he had a 3 to 1 lead over Richard Berenbaum. Berenbaum was on the button, and announced all-in. Levy called and flopped an enormous draw, which completed on the turn. Both players shook hands and congratulated each other in great sportsmanship.

Congratulations on a great performance and a very nice payday!

Our $300 + $30 6-max Champion: Michael Levy – $7,431

Runner-up: Richard Berenbaum – $6,000

Last hand of play:

Tonight’s tournament was a $100 + $20 + $100 Bounty, a format most appreciated by our player base. The 149 players who showed up for the Event testify to that, and blew the 20K guarantee by almost 50%.

Bounties flew, and many multi-way all-in hands took place, as players were going hard after those sweet $100 Bounties. One of those hands saw Yannick Kwan hit a set of tens to quadruple up. Éric Leblond got his kings cracked in that hand and was left with 2,700 chips. A few hours later, with 20 players left, Leblond was in the lead with 385K! He eventually busted after Normand Deguire ate him up in a series of cooler hands.

With 5 left, Deguire and Nazareth Maghakian were sharing the lead, with close to a million chips each. Franco Sicondolfi went out, and that’s when our 4 finalists looked at the ICM numbers. They agreed right away, and after that, the dynamic was very different. Only $300 were left on the line, so people were throwing chips liberally.

As Maghakian was taking some hits, Deguire was taking everybody out. Play slowed down a little bit when it got to heads-up, but despite Maghakian’s efforts to make a comeback and earn the title, Deguire’s stack size prevailed.

An excellent performance by both, who took turns on the job of shrinking the final table. Well done!

Our $100 + $20 + $100 Bounty Champion: Normand Deguire – $2,371

Runner-up: Nazareth Maghakian – $2,419

Last hand of play:

Event 3 was  $50 + $10 NL Hold’em Rebuy Event, a format that spells early action. 84 players took part, and 33 rebuys were accounted for. Of course, this means that a lot of chips were in play, and many big stacks showed up at the final table, led by Danick Landriault and Azizul Haque.

With 9 prizes on the payout table, it was decided that every finalist would get a piece. $10 were subtracted from all 9 amounts, and the 10th place finisher would go home with a 50% profit on his investment. Later on, An ICM chop was concluded by the remaining 3 players. Azizul Haque was on his 2nd final table in a row. That’s 2 for 2! He came in 3rd in both.

Karen Beecraft and Michael Mannucci played heads-up for about 10 minutes. They traded a few small pots, until they had a major pre-flop confrontation. They went to showdown:

Mannucci:
Beecraft:

Board:

Beecraft only had a few chips left, which were lost on the following hand (pictured below).

Mannucci came to the final table with an average stack, and played a very solid game. He did take out 2 very short stacks, but was not involved in any big pot until he won a flip against Danick Landriault to take him out. He just sailed upstream, and finally claimed the title.

Congratulations!

Our $50 + $10 Rebuy Champion: Michael Mannucci – $1,370

Runner-up: Karen Beecraft – $924

Last hand of play: