What a night! There were a total of 143 entries, including 26 re-entries, for tonight’s Day 1A of the Playground 100. In total, twenty 20-minute levels were played and 2,860,000 chips found their way into the bags. 15 players are now qualified for Day 2, and are also in the money.
In the early stages of the tournament, Playground regular Marcello Iacovella got off to a great start. Damien Gozzi was also faring well. Midway through the tournament and by the time the second break came around, Marcello and Damien were still in good position, but there was a new sheriff in town: Joël Bérard was now chip leader. Leader not by much, but in the lead nevertheless. In fact, at this point in the tournament, very few chips separated the top-four players.
As the evening wore on and the action became lethal, the field kept shrinking at a steady rate. At the third break, Damien Gozzi was still second in chips, but by then Joël had amassed an impressive amount of chips and had a huge lead. Joël managed to not only hang on to his lead, but increase his lead in front of his adversaries.
When all was said and done, Joël had gathered no less than 409,500 chips, which he was quite happy to drop into his bag. In second place, Damien has bagged 305,500 chips. The two players are clearly in a good position and will probably keep their eyes on the feeds tomorrow to see how their counts hold up against the players of the two remaining flights of Day 1s.
