Play has now moved into level 7 in Day 1A of the Playground 200, and with the turn of the clock came the end of the late registration period in the tournament. The final total number of entries tonight was 94 – a normal-sized starting flight for a Day 1A in a multi-day tourney.

The play so far has seemed relatively conservative so far, with hands like the following indicative of what can be seen on tables throughout the Tournament Hall. There were 5 players to a flop of when we arrived at the table, and action checked around to Steven Dubois-Daigle on the button, who bet 1,300. Josef Ares in Seat 2 made the call and the other players folded – the hand was now heads up. The turn was the and the action was a simple check-check, and likewise on the river . Josef showed for Ace high while Steven took the small but slightly inflated pot down with his .

The players in Day 1A recently took their first break of the day, which was also our first opportunity to get a good overview of the chip leaders to start the day. Going into level 5 of Day 1A, Eric Al Halaby was in control, having already accumulated over 80K in chips! There’s long way yet to go tonight – after all, registration is still open – but that kind of stack is a great way to get things going on a Day 1!

Registration will be open until 10:15.

Day 1A of the Playground 200 is into level 3 and there are currently 68 entries, including 2 re-entries, with almost exactly 2 hours more of late registration still available.

Here are a few photos of the field to start the night.

Level 1 has now begun in the Playground 200. Weekday evening starts at 7:00pm are generally slow starts – players take advantage of late registration period to avoid any lingering traffic from Montreal. There are 30 players seated at the moment – but that’s bound to go up quickly as the evening progresses.

One of the mainstays of Playground Power Weekends is the Playground 200, a full-scale multi-day poker tournament at a very reasonable $200 + $20 buy-in. With its usual $100,000 prize pool guarantee in place and an online Day 1 already in the books, the event takes off tonight with the first of four live starting flights.

Players begin each starting flight with 25,000 in tournament chips and each Day 1 plays through 14 30-minute levels. Players may enter or re-enter the tournament any time until the beginning of level 7. This is a best-stack forward, next-day re-entry tournament, so even players who have already qualified for Day 2 are welcome to play additional Day 1s in the pursuit of a better Day 2 starting stack. Any unused stacks will simply be removed from play.

The players tonight will already have a target in sight in terms of end-of-day chip counts – in the online flight, Ruben Perceval amassed 187,500 chips. Given the high likelihood of much larger fields in the Live Day 1s, the chip leader at the end of tonight’s action should surpass Ruben’s total – in the past, we have seen end of Day 1 stacks approaching the 400K range!

But all is yet to be learned as only the play itself will tell the tale of this edition of the Playground 200. Action gets underway at 7:00pm in the Tournament Hall here at Playground. Good luck to all!