We just witnessed a 3-way all in that by all signs was a preflop betting war that just slipped out of control of at least one of the 3 players, possibly two. We arrived after all the action was closed and the player in the earliest position, Michael M, had flipped over , his direct neighbour in seat 3, George Whyte, turned over and Felix Martel-Racine had shown down his . Felix covered everyone, but not by very much – and both he and Michael were clearly not happy that they were blocking some of each other’s outs.

Board:

That made little difference, however, and George’s Aces held. Michael was eliminated while Felix was left with little more than crumbs.

As usual, the eliminations to start Day 2 have been coming very quickly – 20 players have already hit the rail and level 15 isn’t even over yet! The field is now under 30 eliminations away from the bubble – so while it’s early to say that bubble play has begun, the more canny players will start paying attention to it very soon.

Photos from level 15

The players who have qualified for Day 2 in the Playground 200 have taken their places at the 13 tables in action this morning and the tournament director has just made the introductory announcements for the proceedings, including the famous command to the dealers to “Shuffle up and Deal!”

And with that, play has now resumed in the tournament. Blind levels are now 40 minutes in length and play will continue today through 10 levels. Good luck!

In just 10 minutes, action will resume in the October Power Weekend 2018 edition of the Playground 200. 110 players will take their spot at one of 13 tables in the Tournament Hall here at Playground Poker Club, all of them vying for a spot in the money, and later to reserve a seat in Day 3 of the event and the big money positions. With $350 set to be paid for a min-cash and $19,100 up top for the eventual winner, there’s a lot to play for!

The tournament will pay 61 players, so a little more than half of the players who start today will achieve the first goal – a tournament cash. With only 49 players to be eliminated before the bubble arrives, the pressure will be on players from almost the beginning of play on Day 2. Typically there are a flurry of eliminations in the first level, which could easily take the event half way to the bubble, and then the pressure will definitely be on the entire field.

Michael Khan starts the day in the driver’s seat with a huge stack of 417,000 – 139bb. He’s one of just 4 players that will start the day with a stack of greater and 100bb, and only 9 players have double the tournament chip average to start the day. Even the big stacks, however, will find themselves under pressure before too long – because there are quite a few very experienced talented players in the field. There are players throughout the restart list that have “been there before” – who have enough experience in multi-day events like this one to be dangerous no matter how much they’re starting with. Nick Nickoletopoulos, Tomas Larivee Magni, Charles La Boissonniere – and no one can ignore Karim-Olivier Kamal and Albert Nguyen, players with both pedigree and huge stacks to start the day!

Action gets underway in 10 minutes – good luck to all of the players!

All of the Day 1 starting flights in the October Power Weekend edition of the Playground 200 are now complete, and with a total of 487 entries, 111 stacks qualified for Day 2. One player – Armand King – managed to qualify for Day 2 twice, so the smaller of his two stacks has been removed from play and 110 players will take to the tables for the restart on Day 2. The tournament will resume at 12:00pm on Saturday, October 6.

When play resumes, the players will be seated according to the following seating table. Click (or tap) on any table heading to sort, or use the Search box to find your name.