The Playground 200 is now down to 81 players and 80 will get paid – it’s the bubble! A couple of things are happening at the same time. First, the clock has been paused for hand-for-hand play. Second, being down to 81 players, a table is being broken and all of those players will be at their new tables before the first hand is dealt. Next – during hand-for-hand play the clock is counted down by 2 minutes per hand – which means that exactly one hand will be dealt and then players will be on break.

In Jason Conforti’s own words, “I’m just playing the rush!” And some kind of rush it is, because in very short order, Jason has has been able to take over the chip lead in the tournament – he’s up to well over 700K at the moment.

Here are a few other photos of the players before their first break of the day. The bubble is approaching quickly – there are just 84 players remaining.

Through the first level and a half of play, the Playground 200 has already dropped by 34 players – just over half of the number that must be eliminated before the bubble arrives today. The pace of play has, has usual, been very quick, but things seem to have slowed down a little bit as the smaller stacks have been eliminated – or on the case of Charles-Eric Benoit – grown to more than respectability.

The players’ first break of the day will come following the next level, which is to say in about 40 minutes, and it’s quite likely that the bubble will be reached shortly after the break.

Vincent Tremblay is still the chip leader in the tournament, and he has grown his stack up to well over 600K at this point. The player who started second in chips – Mathieu Boucher – is also now seated at Table 64, which looks to have an overload of large stacks on it.

Charles-Eric B started Day 2 with a short stack, but he is back in business following a triple up in the first level of play.

The board read when the chips went in. Charles-Eric was up against Claude Amar and Francis Rivest-Beaudoin. When Rivest-Beaudoin and Amar checked through the turn and river, Charles-Eric knew his hand was good and flipped over . Two pair was plenty good in this spot, as Rivest-Beaudoin and Amar quickly mucked. With the triple up, Charles-Eric is now playing a healthy stack, not far off the 128,000 chip average.

Here are a few photos taken during the first 10 minutes of the action today.