The tournament hall is eerily quiet, after the departure of the 19 players that have just qualified for Day 2 of the Playground 200. There were some intense moments tonight as the players kept pushing towards their goal of bagging chips after 14 levels.

After all was said and done, Mohammadamin Khalilian bagged the most chips tonight with a final count of 343,500 chips. This performance has placed him in the pole position of the combined qualified players for Day 2. His closest rival tonight is Bill Kontaratos, who managed to bag 236,500 chips. Questioned about his final chip count when he was exiting the tournament hall, Bill informed us that had he not lost a huge pot in the last few hands with pocket Queens, he would have secured more than 400K! But it was not meant to be.

Any player may play additional Day 1’s even if he/she has survived a previous Day 1 with chips. Players who qualify for Day 2 more than once will resume play on Day 2 with their largest qualifying stack; all other qualifying stacks will be forfeited.

There are two Day 1 flights remaining, both of them Friday February 22nd, at 1:00pm and 7:00pm. You can see the updated list of the combined Day 1’s here.

The tournament staff have announced that there will be four more hands before the coveted bags come out. Right now there are 19 players left and all of them are hoping to qualify for Day 2.

We’ll make sure to update the list of qualified players as soon as the chip counts have been verified.

There comes a time in every player’s tournament when he knows that a specific hand was the game changer. Mohammadamin Khalilian will no doubt know exactly which hand that was for him tonight…

Our attention was already on table #34, where Evie Karoubalis had been seen desperately trying to find herself on the receiving end of any all-in-worthy cards, for the last stretch of the tournament. With only 21,100 chips left, Evie made her move. Her all-in was instantly called by her neighbor, chip leader Griffin Mason, which left Mohammadamin left to act. In a quiet voice, Mohammadamin voiced his action: “all-in”. This left Jean-Francois Stoycheff, who obviously was struggling with his decision. As soon as Stoycheff folded, Griffin Mason called with lightning speed, tabling his hand immediately.
Griffin:
Evie:
Mohammadamin:

The flop was unveiled, with a window that put a smile on Griffin’s face: , , . As everyone was getting ready to say goodbye to Evie and Mohammadamin, a gradual hush came over the table when the turn came out . When the hit the table in the river position, Mohammadamin’s jaw dropped to his chest, mirroring everyone’s thoughts of disbelief. Straight!

Adding Evie’s chips to his stack might not have a been a big affair for Mohammadamin. But the extra 105,000 that Griffin Mason reluctantly pushed towards him put a wide smile on his face.

The players just came back from their last break at the end of level 11 and we had a chance to update the leaderboard. We set the bar a little higher this time around and went looking for stacks above the 150K mark. Sure enough we found three.

It`s hard not to shed a special light on chipleader Bill Kontaratos, who`s managed to almost have twice our target amount. Undeniably an interesting lead by any standards, Bill’s 299,100 chips are sure to be well guarded by the strategic player, with only 2 levels to go before the bags come out.

Donald Abdelhay, who’s known somewhat of a rocky road today has been trying hard to keep his head above the water, and doing a pretty good job. We arrived at table #31 to see the first of what was going to be three consecutive all in’s for Donald.

The first hand involved Donald, Alexandros Charitos and Yaseen Siddiqui. The three gentlemen got the betting out of the way by going all in preflop. Alexandros was first, Donald second and Yaseen quickly followed. The three players tabled their hands:
Yaseen, who easily covered both his opponents showed
Alexandros, who had the least amount of chips tabled
Donald threw down

The dealer made short work of getting all the community cards out:

Short stack Alexandros scooped up the main pot plus 13,500 from both other players for his set of ten`s. This left Donald, happy with his kicker and with his 18,300 chips, so no one was eliminated in this hand.

The next hand proved uneventful as Donald shoved his 18.3K stack forward, making every other player fold.

In the third hand, however, Donald pushed his ever-growing stack forward and got called by Yaseen Siddiqui again and also by Alon Messica. The flop came out: . Yaseen check-folded to Alon’s relatively small 6,100 bet. As soon as Yaseen folded, Donald held both his cards face forward in the air and said (to us): “if you are going to write up one of my hands, it might as well be this one!” and let his drop on the felt. Seeing trip Kings for Donald, Alon wanted to muck his hand, but had to turn it over, as per tournament rules: , almost running dead. Only the last 2 aces could save him, but the and on the turn and river sealed his fate, and a smiling Donald Abdelhay scooped up the chips again. “It ain’t over ’til the fat lady sings”, one of the players whispered. We have some ways to go, since technically the famous Fat Lady will only be singing Sunday night, at the end of Day 3, but everyone agreed.

The players are slowly heading out of the tournament hall for a well deserved break, after 8 levels of play. When they return there will be 6 levels of play remaining, roughly three hours. This is usually when the tides start turning for a lot of shorter stacks, as the blinds increase gradually and the larger stacks turn up the pressure.

Since the last time we updated the leaderboard, four players have stacked more than 100K chips. The only player to make a second appearance on the board is Frederik Levesque, but he is trailing his other three opponents. Bill Kontaratos, one of Playground Poker’s regular players, has taken the lead with a very decent stack of 143,200.

There will be a last break between levels 11 and 12 and we’ll be sure to keep the leaderboard up to date.