Playground Poker

On a board showing , Mike McDonald checked first to act in a heads-up pot versus Benoit Galland. After a quick pause, Benoit fired a bet of 133K into a pot roughly double that amount. Mike tanked for a moment before putting together a 400K bet and sliding it forward, and without much hesitation, Benoit replied with an all-in of 663K total. Although it wasn’t much more, Mike seemed convinced that Benoit had the goods and agonized over the decision for a few minutes. He apologized in advance in case he was “slow-rolling”, and finally made the call, tabling a monstrous for Kings-full-of-Aces. Benoit tabled a second-best before getting up and shaking hands with his table-mates.

With that pot, Mike climbed to 2,200,000 for the chip-lead with 4 players remaining. Marc-Olivier is in second place with 1,400,000, Sorel in third with 850,000 and Roberto holds the shortest stack with 800,000.

Play has just entered level 17.

5th place: Benoit Galland – $30,000.00

Marc-Olivier raised the action to 35K from the cutoff, and Sorel Mizzi placed a 3-bet to 85K from the button. With 243K, Vishal Singh Maini 4-bet all-in from the small blind, and after Marc-Olivier folded, Sorel went into the tank for a few moments. He eventually made the call and both hands were tabled:

Vishal:
Sorel:

Sorel found a runner-runner club flush on the board to earn the 1/2 million chip pot, sending Vishal to the cage to pickup his payout.

6th place: Vishal Singh Maini – $20,000.00

Marc-Olivier opened to 35K from early position, and Ryan Yu 3-bet all-in for 178K from the hijack. Mike McDonald made the call from the button, and Marc-Olivier flashed his pair of Sevens as he was mucking his hand.

Ryan:
Mike:

Both players paired the flop, but Mike’s hand was strongest on the board to bring the High Roller into the money. The final 6 have locked in a min-cash of $20,000 and are competing for the $200,000 top prize.

John Krpan arrived at the final table as the short stack with roughly 100K, and found a double-up fairly early on. A few orbits later, he opened to 35K from middle position, and was 3-bet to 108K by Mike McDonald from the blinds. He replied with a 4bet all-in for 246K and Mike obliged.

John tabled and was in great shape to bring himself back into the game, however Mike, holding , made a straight on the board to bring the field onto the money bubble.

On one of the first hands of the High Roller final table, Marc-Olivier opened to 27K from early position, and then 4-bet shoved after Jason Koon raised to 80K next to act. Jason made the call with his premium hand, only to see he ran into rockets.

Marc-Olivier:
Jason:

Jason picked up a glimmer of hope on the flop but inevitably fell short as the board read . With that pot, Marc-Oliver breached the 7-figure mark by a hair.