We have seen many bustouts since the bubble burst just over one hour ago.  The shorter stacks keep waiting until picking up either a pocket pair, or perhaps a strong Ace, and then we are hearing those players announce, “all in!”.

On table 19, the player who was utg+1, Alexandre Ruest, open shoved his stack, which looked like it was around 10 bb’s.  Jean Lafleur, in the lowjack seat, asked the dealer for a count.  Once the dealer confirmed that it was indeed around 10 bb’s (99K), Jean announced “call”.  All other players got out of the way and the hands were opened.

Alexandre had shoved with
Jean smooth called with:

The flop gave Jean the king that he wanted to see, but there was the usual all in sweat as Alexandre had flopped a gutty! The on the turn didn’t change anything, and the on the river was also a brick, and, Alexandre’s day came to an end.

We will have our next break in a few moments and will once again be updating our leaderboard.

Play in the Playground 200 moved to hand-for-hand action immediately coming out of the players’ first break of the day, and 2 minutes would be wound off the clock for each hand starting at 40 minutes remaining in the new level. There were several short-stacked players, during the first two hands, including Ivan Driard who, on his bb, had just 4,000 chips behind – but he and the others managed to double up and stave off elimination for at least another few hands…

Hand-for-hand started with 73 players remaining and the first elimination came relatively quickly. Frederic Normand got it in against Jahkheem Polydore and had his beat by Jahkheem’s on a board runout. Frederic’s elimination brought the field to 72 players, and while play was still paused, table 25 was broken and all of the tables resumed play in a few moments with exactly 9 players seated per table.

About 7 hands in, on the same table where Ivan was nursing his tiny stack, a hand developed that would take the Playground 200 the rest of the way into the money. Nassim K was all in and he had two customers, John Arauja and William Pauzé, both of whom covered him. Both players had called and the flop was dealt.

Flop: .

This time it was John’s turn to shove his dominant stack, and William made the call. All three players’ hands were tabled.

Nassim:
John:
William:

John had out-flopped both of his opponents and after the virtual formalities of the turn and river, he stacked the chips and William and Nassim were eliminated. Because both players were on the same table, the 71st place prize went to William, whose stack was greater than Nassim’s. Nassim – was the unfortunate bubble player in the tournament. And short-stacked Ivan managed to sneak his way into the money!

Everyone else is now in the money! Congratulations!

Although there are many large stacks in play, only two players have surpassed the 500K mark; John Arauja, one of the top stacks from Day 1C, leads the field with a whopping 599,000.  Followed closely behind him is David Bonneau, a Playground regular tournament grinder, holding 528,000.  There are another 11 stacks in excess of 300,000, so we expect to see a larger leaderboard at the next break.

The TD has just announced that we are “hand for hand” as we are now on the money bubble.  Stay tuned as we watch and report the action on the bubble!

Action was opened in early position by Hugues Fontaine, raising it up 4x (16,000).  He found three callers, and, there was now over 75K in the pot pre-flop.  The dealer flopped: , and, Fontaine decided to keep the pedal to the metal and lead out for 100,000. All three other players in the hand threw away their cards, and Fontaine opened his hand to show the table: .  Although he had flopped top set (AAA), it was a scary board since he wasn’t holding the , and, could have easily been beaten on the turn or river, had any club hit the board.

Arriving at table 21 on the river, two players were all in. Yan Gohier in seat 1 had pocket Ace’s, and was all in against Eric Guindon in seat 7 with a pair of Ten’s.  As fate would have it, as pretty as those Ace’s always look, Guindon had flopped a set of Ten’s and proceeded to eliminate Gohier.  Doyle Brunson would always say, “with Ace’s, win a little, or lose a lot”.

We are approaching the bubble and will be following the action as players will soon be in the money.

John Araujo started the day with a huge stack and continues to build, and we may have just witnessed a part of his formula for success. We arrived at table 27 on the river with a board of laid out in front of the dealer and a bet of 21K on the table in front of Nassim K. John was in the tank.

After thinking things through, he tossed in a single yellow T1,000 chip to make the call and showed down for just a pair of 6s on board and his Ace kicker… and he was good! Nassim simply mucked his hand while John added yet more chips to his already oversized stack.