Shawn McCrory

“If only it was in a cash game….” was the saying heard around the table following a dramatic cooler on table 20.

It started out as a three-way pot, and there had been a significant three-bet before the flop, judging by the amount of chips already in the middle. The first player to act on the flop, Badri Abboud, stacked up his chips, roughly 25K, and pushed them all into the middle. The next player, Michael Mckinnon, moved all in over the top, and the third player quickly folded. In most situations, Abboud would have been happy with the way the action went, however, Mickinnon was holding the only hand Abboud didn’t want to see. It was a set of fours for Abboud against Mckinnon’s set of nines.  The nine on the turn seemed like overkill for a moment, but the river brought out the case four! And with that Mckinnon doubled his stack and crippled his opponent, who would hit the rail shortly after.

With slightly more than an hour played on Day 1B, the field has grown to 40 entries. Despite a slow start when the cards first got in the air, there has been a steady flow of new players joining the field. The ice has been broken on the re-entries after one of the two players eliminated during the first two levels opted to re-enter.

David Guay jumped out to the early chip lead after making a straight with on a flop and finding a way to play for stacks from there to send the first player to the rail and double up in the first level of play.

There remains over three hours of late registration and re-entries in this flight so there will certainly be plenty of new players and re-entries throughout the afternoon.

Here’s a look at some of the players in the field:

The March Power Weekend will be gaining momentum this afternoon, as the second of four starting flights for the Playground 500 gets underway. This exciting event provides a massive 50,000 chip starting stack and a guaranteed prize pool of $100,000.

Each starting flight will play 14 30-minute levels, giving the players plenty of time to accumulate as many chips as possible for Friday evening’s Day 2. This is a re-entry event with unlimited re-entries permitted until the beginning of the ninth level of play. That means that each starting flight will have four and a half hours of late registration and re-entries so expect some interesting dynamics in the early going. The friendly blind structure and big starting stack will allow players lots of options in their approach to grinding through this three-day event.

Last night’s flight, Day 1A, brought out 69 entries, 13 of which survived to the end to bag chips for Day 2.

The cards are now in the air. Good luck to all!