Boucherville’s own (and Montreal’s own, and Quebec’s own) Jonathan Duhamel has won the $2,300 + $200 NL Hold’em Second Chance event in the 2017 Playground Poker Spring Classic.

After a bit of an unconventional deal, Duhamel and runner up Martin Finger chose to divide the entire prize pool via chip chop and then flip for the trophy. This kind of deal is not typically permitted in Playground events, but considering the parity of the players’ experience levels, an exception was made in this case.

The event began at 11am on May 8th and Duhamel was at the table the minute it opened, despite the fact that a tournament at this buy-in level that starts at that hour is usually a popular target for late reg. He then continued all the way to the very end – a true “wire to wire” victory. At the end of Day 1, Duhamel was 2nd in chips to Finger, and both were quite a ways ahead of the rest of the field.

Both players were perfectly calm today as play continued at a wicked pace, starting just 4 from the bubble, through the bubble, and then down to 4 players remaining. At that point the pace slowed down a bit, and all 4 players made it through almost 2 levels of play until Ryan Yu was eliminated – and then Oren Haziza exited almost immediately.

The minute Oren left the table the players quickly agreed to a deal that paid Duhamel $57,000 and Finger $47,162 and they flipped for the trophy. It took three hands to get the job done, but finally Duhamel won the trophy as well.

Event #7 Champion: Jonathan Duhamel, $57,000.00

2nd place: Martin Finger, $47,162.00

Final hand of play

The 3 players remaining in the Second Chance tournament returned to play to find that the massive chip leader was Jonathan Duhamel, playing over 1.4M in chips, while Oren Haziza was playing just 240K and Martin Finger around 570K.

After just 3 or 4 hands of play, Jonathan opened his button with a standard raise and Oren shoved all in over the top. Martin got out of the way and Jonathan called.

Oren:
Jonathan:

The community cards couldn’t save Oren: and he was eliminated in 3rd place.

3rd place: Oren Haziza, $24,630.00

Action in the Second Chance tournament may have stalled in terms of eliminations during the past level, but that’s not to say that the chips weren’t flying around. With both Ryan Yu and Oren “Silence the Fish” Haziza under threat at various times, pots were being played, and presumably big folds were being made as there were several uncalled all-in bets and raises along the way.

The big difference maker in the recent play was two pots played between Jonathan Duhamel and Ryan Yu. In both cases Jonathan had position on Ryan, and in both cases a big river bet got the fold from Ryan, leaving him quite short stacked as he had been earlier in the action today.

Finally the two players were blind on blind and Ryan went all in from the sb for about 235K, and found a quick call from Jonathan in the bb.

Ryan:
Jonathan:

The flop was a dream for Ryan – Los giving him the open-ended straight draw, but the and on the turn and river couldn’t move him ahead of Jonathan’s Ace-high, and Ryan was eliminated in 4th.

4th place: Ryan Yu, $15,900.00

Oren Haziza has been very happily playing his short stack for a few orbits but he has just found a nice double up to bring his stack a little more in line with the rest of the table and perhaps give him aspirations to ladder up another pay jump – or two…

Ryan opened the action with raise to 20K, which was quickly met by a 3-bet from Jonathan to 75k. Oren instantly shoved, Martin and Ryan folded and Duhamel made the call for about 140K.

Oren:
Jonathan:

The community cards brought no danger ( :2) and Oren was up to over 300K.