The last hand before the break must have made Michael Malm’s day. Michael had been among the chip leaders all night and already had quite a big stack in front of him. His only opponent in this had was Vsevolod Malamud, and he too, had a huge stack.

When we got to the table both players were all-in on a board. Both players turned their hands over:

Michael :

Vsevolod:

Both players had hit trips on the turn, hence the all-ins. Michael did not have many outs, but one of them showed its face on the river: ; full house for Micheal, and a cooler for Vsevolod!

This was the last hand before the break and it took Michael (and the dealer) almost every minute of the break to transfer all the chips to him and to re-stack them. By far the biggest stack of this tournament so far. There was no doubt who would be on top of the next leaderboard.

The tournament now enters level 13 and the eliminations are still going strong. There are now 40 players left and the number of tables has now shrunk to four.

Day 1A qualified 15 players yesterday, and this morning’s Day 1B saw 20 more players make the cut. Tonight’s Day 1C will see 16 players add their names to the distinguished list and come back tomorrow to duke it out in Day 2.

Here are a few photos of the players in action.

After level 11, the players took a short break, which gave us the opportunity to check-out the scene.

Roaming between the 6 tables left, one thing was abundantly clear: not one player is emerging as a huge leader. Once again, the leaderboard shows a small number of chips between the first and last player.

With our scope set on stacks 100K+, we honed-in on 6 players. Three players from the previous leaderboard have managed to stay among the leaders. But a few newcomers are quickly gaining ground and are showing no signs of slowing down.

The elimination rate is steady and there are now 80 players remaining in Day 1C of the Playground 100.

As the players hit the rail, the tables are shrinking and the chips are climbing. With over 3 million chips in play, there is a lot of action to be had.

We took a few photos of the players from the previous level.

The players took a break between levels 6 and 7 and we hit the felts in search of candidates for the leaderboard.

Marc-André Larouche has taken the lead. Eight players have managed to gather more than 50,000 chips, but Larouche is way ahead with 77,000. With only 3,000 chips separating the next 7 players, saying the race is tight would be an understatement.

The registration is closed and a total of 158 entries made their way into the hall tonight, including 28 re-entries. Of those, there are now 103 players still in. Action will stop when 16 players are left standing… or rather sitting.