The end of level 12 brought on the 2nd break for the players. As they exited the tournament hall for a well-deserved reprieve we went in search of our leaders.

Everyone on the new leaderboard is making his first appearance. In fact, no players from the previous list have managed to stay ahead of the pack.

For now, Josh Caballero has a huge lead on his opponents, with a whopping 322,500 stack. That’s quite impressive when the boards show an average stack of 121K.

With just about 65% of the field gone, the pressure is on and the action is strong. We witnessed a hand that made our inner-player cringe, and Chris Arvanitis bleed chips.

With the blinds 800/1,600 + 800, Anish Kumar Sood wanted to raise to 3,600. Unfortunately he said, “Thirty-six thousand”, and was bound to make the bet. Anish was holding , and his reaction to his error was unmistakable. Chris Arvanitis, holding didn’t hesitate and went in.

Then the unthinkable happened when the board revealed two higher pairs: which meant that Sood would win the hand because of his king kicker. Obviously devastated, Chris was paying the final bet when we arrived at the table, which was over 65,000 chips.

Sood scooped-up the chips but was obviously ill at ease. To add insult to injury, the table at which both players were seated was breaking, so both players headed off to their new tables, which meant that Chris could not attempt to reclaim his chips any time soon.

We are now halfway through level 8 and the boards are now showing the complete prize pool. 17 places will be paid, with the champion pocketing $4,424.

The action is fierce and intense, and players are getting eliminated with lightning speed. Here are a few more photos of the players, from level 7.

We are now at the break between levels 6 and 7. The registration period is closing and the boards show a total of 131 entries and 90 players still in.

During the break we did a quick tour and went looking for stacks above 70K.  We found a few and you can see them on the leaderboard below.  But one player is in a league of his own.  Patrick Quinn sits with a whopping stack of 136,600 chips, that’s more than triple the average.  At this stage of the tournament, he’s enjoying more than a healthy lead.  We’ll keep an eye on Patrick and see if he can manage to take that lead and improve on it.

Jean-François Stoycheff is in the house tonight. The 37-year old poker player from Montreal had a great run this week, finishing in third place last night in Event #2, the Playground 200 three-day tournament.

Yesterday Jean-François had the misfortune of sliping on some ice on the way to Playground for Day 3. After the tournament, Jean-François went to the hospital to find out that his “sprain” was in fact a triple-fracture and far more serious than he thought. Jean-François is back at it, crutches and all, sitting at table 27 behind an average stack, hoping to bring home another win in the last event of the Playground Power Weekend.

We all wish him a good recovery and hats off to him for playing all day through what must have been some pretty painful moments.

The players are streaming in, there are now 100 players registered, with a little more than one hour left on the late registration timer. The Bounty tournaments always attract a lot of players, since this format allows players to be a little more aggressive with their actions. Get ready to see a lot of fast-paced action tonight.

Here are a few early photos of the players.