Everyone who plays tournament poker here at Playground – especially during festivals – knows Mitcheal Ferguson (and his huge beard), and no one hopes to see him with a big stack… but with a recent double through
Alexandru Codau, he now has a few chips.

Before the hand, Andre Dries had managed to distribute his whole stack to the table, with Alexandru being the chief beneficiary. And with those chips, Alexandru chose to raise to 10K from utg, and when action folded around to Mitcheal in the bb, he shoved for 40,500. Alexandru made the call and the hands were exposed:

Mitcheal:
Alexandru:

The flop was great for the all-in player: and the turn and river gave him the full house – and a stack surpassing 90K to play with as the tournament has reduced to two tables.

When we learned that Bini Gianpaolo and Andre Dries were the co-chip-leaders in the event, they were safely seated a long way from one another. However just minutes after that, a table broke and they ended up seated side by side as Andre came to table 66 for the next phase of the tournament.

This has led to an interesting dynamic at the table, as there were a few in position shoves by players with smaller stacks while Bini and Andre were out of position to start the hand – in each case garnering the fold – but even faster folds as position began to favour the big stacks and both of them worked at reuniting with lost chips.

In the meantime, eliminations have continued and now there are just 22 players left on 3 tables.

Play continues at a rapid pace in today’s 8-Max tournament, and with just 29 players remaining on 4 tables, things will only heat up from here.

Two players so far have passed the century mark – playing over 100K in chips: Bini Gianpaolo and Andre Dries. There are several players with stacks just behind these two, however – so there’s not much comfort in having even a 100K stack at this point in the event.

The players in Event #3 have just returned from their first break of the day. Late registration has now come to a close and the final tally is 88 entries – including 11 re-entries – for a prize pool that totals $8,536.

During the break we managed to get counts of the early leaders today, and so far, Normand Plessis Belair is in the prime position with already greater than 3x his starting stack. There’s a long way to go, however, and the leaderboard is certainly going to change significantly – and frequently – between now and the end of the event.

Here are some photos of the players in Event #3 so far. There are currently 71 players entered including 3 re-entries, and with 35 minutes of late registration still available – it’s open until the end of the break following level 6 – that number is sure to climb.

Event #3 is through level 2 and with another 1 hour 35 minutes of late registration and re-entry still available, there are already 42 players entered with more coming in every few minutes. Only 40 of those are still active – there have been two eliminations by players who have not (yet) re-entered.