After losing a significant portion of her chips to Elie and then a chunk more a few hands later, Brenda was very short-stacked and just looking for a spot to double. She found a reasonable spot and raised all-in holding 
and Cristian Muset called with pocket deuces.
The community cards read 
and the deuces held.
6th place: Brenda Blackburn, $3,790
Elie Abdallah has certainly been riding a rollercoaster on this final table. Just a few minutes after losing most of his chips in a cooler on the river, he played a blind-on-blind hand against Brenda Blackburn that saw her raise her sb to 180K and Elie called. The flop came 
… and it was time for action.
Brenda opened with a bet of 200K, which was met almost instantly with Elie’s shove over the top, and Brenda went in the tank. The amount was plainly visible, but regardless she asked for the 200K to be brought in and for a count of the remaining – he had 545K more. Eventually, she made the call.
Brenda: 8h 
Elie: 
The turn and river were the 
and which changed nothing, and Elie was up to 1.7M
A couple of hands later, he was on the button and got involved in a 3-way hand with the small blind (Gary Lucci) and bb (Mykyta Kurilenko) and with the pot at almost a million chips, on the river, Elie bet 635K and got two folds to bring up his stack to over 2.5M.
Play now continues in level 29.
We arrived at the table on the turn just in time to see Elie Abdallah check-raise to just a hair under 1M chips on a board reading 
. Action flipped back to Mykyta who instantly shoved over the top – and Elie quickly called with the larger stack of the two by at least 800K.
Elie: for a turned straight
Mykyta: for two pair
The river… to give Mykyta a full house. Elie let out a small sigh but otherwise silently cut out the chips to send to Mykyta – who is now playing around 3.5M.
The players remaining on the final table of the Playground 200 have just taken their first scheduled break of the day, and we took the opportunity to get full counts for all 6 players.
| First Name | Prénom | Last Name | Name | Seat | Siège | Stack | Tapis |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brenda Mary | Blackburn | Seat 1 | 2,090,000 |
| Elie | Abdallah | Seat 2 | 2,740,000 |
| Gary | Lucci | Seat 5 | 670,000 |
| Mykyta | Kurilenko | Seat 6 | 1,750,000 |
| Cristian | Muset | Seat 9 | 2,730,000 |
| Thierry | Blanc | Seat 10 | 2,250,000 |
It was almost as if Amirhossein Shemshaki had a pre-determined number of spots he wanted to ladder up, because in the hand immediately following the elimination of Blais and Ringpa, he was all-in – and out.
We missed the hand, but did catch the fact that both he and Cristian Muset did have legit hands, so it definitely wasn’t a case of tournament suicide – rather, it was a classic race between pocket Queens and suited Ace-King. Christian took the chips and Amirhossein was sent to the Tournament Desk to pick up his payout ticket.
7th place: Amirhossein Shemshaki, $3,170
Mykyta Kurilenko has just taken out two players: William Blais and Thundup Ringpa are out of the tournament. We missed the preflop action (writing up the previous elimination), but all three players were all-in preflop.
William Blais: 
Thundup Ringpa: 
Mykyta Kurilenko: 
There was an ace on the flop for Thundup: 
but there were also three Hearts – and the 
turn moved Mykyta into the lead while the others were drawing dead.
Mykyta is now up over 1.7M in chips.
8th place: Thundup Ringpa, $2,540
9th place: William Blais, $1,910
