As expected, the last few levels of Day 1C played out with all kinds of exciting poker action.  Short stacks shoved, big stacks called. Some players doubled up. Others busted out. That’s tournament poker.

The big stacks played right up until the very end, but avoided clashing with each other.  When it was all said and done, Pierre Pellerin, the chip leader from the last break, was able to maintain the lead and bagged 315,500 chips.  Following closely behind Pierre is John Araujo, who bagged 306,500 chips. The 3rd largest stack belongs to Cameron Wilson (217,500 chips), who also was playing one of the larger stacks all afternoon. In 4th place is Playground tournament reg Luc Lariviere (202,000 chips).

The last chance to qualify is happening right now in Day 1D, and late registration is open until 10:15pm, so why not come on down and take a shot at this $100,000 guaranteed prize pool!

Consult the Playground 200 Combined Day 1 Results page to see all Day 2 qualifiers (including counts).

Stacks are starting to grow now that almost another 40 players have left the tournament. This is normal as more than half of today’s eliminations took place since our last break.

One player, Pierre Pellerin, has managed to leap way ahead of the field, amassing a little bit more than double the 2nd place runner-up.  The tournament is now moving into level 12, which means it is down to the last 3 levels of play in Day 1C.  This is when we traditionally see the short stacks trying to run up their counts so that they can return on Day 2 with some breathing room.

Often in these multi-day events there are also a few coolers in the last few levels, especially when two of the larger stacks are on the same table and end up fighting it out in a big hand.  Stay tuned for more updates as we report on the action.

Here are a few more photos taken during levels 9 and 10 in today’s Day 1C.

Normally by the 2nd break we tend see as many as 7 or 8 really large stacks.  Today the word in play is “caution”; players are guarding their stacks and not spewing off chips unnecessarily. Consequently, we have only seen 3 stacks that have surpassed the 100K mark, although there are still many other stacks throughout the room in the 70K-100K range. In addition, with the great structure in this weekend event, and with six more 30 minute levels to play, a well timed double or triple up can still bolt any of the smaller stacks to the top of the leaderboard.

Here are the 3 chip leaders as we head into level 9:

The tournament registration is now closed, there are a total of 135 entries, which include 20 re-entries.  We have now just started level 8 and play will continue until the end of level 14. If you weren’t able to join the action this afternoon, there is still another opportunity to fire a bullet tonight at 7 PM in Day 1D, and since we normally see our largest fields on a Friday night, there is always a chance to bag an extra large stack when there will be so many chips in play.

Here are some more photos of players that have joined the field:

The players in Day 1C have just taken their first break of the day and we did a quick survey of the room to see if anyone had managed to take a solid lead after just 4 levels. We found that one player – Sebastien Vezina – has already managed to put together a stack of over 100K!

Behind him on the leaderboard are two players with just about double the chip average – but after only 4 levels, there has hardly been enough time for many players to build a big stack!