The 6-max Re-entry event started at 12 noon and attracted 113 players for an afternoon of tournament poker. The players had done an ICM chop when they were four handed and had left the required $162 for the 1st place winner.  Khanroy Fernandez was crushing for hours, and when play went three handed, he had close to a six to one chip advantage over Antoine Simon, and a little more than a four to one advantage over Robert Gosselin. Winning a tournament requires a certain amount of aggression [More...]

Just as heads up action was about to start, Arthur W. said, "This won't take long." It was not a lie, because after only a couple of hands, the final hand came up. Before the hand Sam said, "I think I will call blind" and added 15,000 to his small blind. Both players received their hands. True to his word, Sam never looked at his hand and waited for Arthur to act. Arthur checked and the flop came out: . Arthur checked and Sam, still playing blind, casually threw in a bet of [More...]

An epic heads-up battle took place between Jean-Pascal Gauthier and Anish Sood to close out the action in Event #1 in the February 2019 Playground Power Weekend. Along the way, the two remaining players looked at the ICM chop numbers, but in the end, they decided to just play on. Anish was dominating up until the last hand before break, but with only 10 seconds to go before the break was to start, an important hand was dealt.  Anish was on the button and looked down at and shoved.  [More...]

During heads-up play, the players decided to make another small deal; instead of $400 going to 1st place, they agreed to re-adjust and leave $300 for 1st and $100 for 2nd. The two players battled back and forth for an orbit or two, and finally they were both all-in: Jonathan had and Normand had .  Jonathan was happy to smash the flop, hitting 2 pair, but as seasoned tournament poker players know, in most all-in situations, there seems to always be a sweat. He was [More...]

The heads up action was setup to be quick, with Yannick Bourque Patry having a huge lead on Denyse Mignault. Both players were obviously starting to show signs of fatigue, and the end seemed near. Right off the bat, Denyse doubled up in the first hand, armed with pocket kings and 520,000 chips. After this quick hand, she managed to go all in 6 of the next 8 hands. Yannick seemed unable to get his hands on any decent cards at all. The blinds went up to 30K/60K and the pace intensified [More...]

Event #5, a $200 + $20 Deepstack Freezeout, started at 11:00am, featuring a 30,000 chip starting stack and 20 minute levels.  Although the weather was not the best today, 113 players made the trip to Playground to enjoy a Sunday afternoon of tournament poker. There was a guaranteed prize pool of $15,000 that ended up swelling to $21,922! There were many local grinders mixed in with out of town players competing for a top prize of $5,252.  The day played out slowly, with many players grinding [More...]

The heads up match was between chip leader Manfred Gunther and Patrick St-Onge. Manfred has been running extremely well and was on fire tonight. He's been consistently among the chip leaders and has managed to stay pretty much ahead of every player on the final table. Patrick has had a roller coaster ride in this tournament but is a player not to be taken lightly on any given day. The whole confrontation lasted only a few hands. By doubling up in the first hand, Patrick was now in a [More...]