Day 3 of the All-Stars for Starlight is here, and 30 players remain in contention from the 1,109 that we began with, all gunning for the huge $26,000 first place prize – which is accompanied by a TonyBet Winter Festival Champion’s Trophy! The tournament will play down until a winner is crowned, and you can follow live updates throughout the night here on the Playground Poker Club Blog.

Leading the field is local Kosta Papa, who bagged just shy of 1.5 million in chips, however many players are right on his tail as stacks a fairly close. Other players to watch are David Bolduc Hamel, Nick-Real Seide and Bill Kontaratos, who have all not only proven their skills time and time again, and who have also all bagged considerable stacks.

The All-Stars for Starlight event was the kickoff event to this year’s TonyBet Winter Festival, and is a charity event in support of the Starlight Children’s Foundation of Canada. A massive $27,725 was raised for the foundation through this event, as $25 was collected per entry.

Good luck to all the players who have made it through to Day 3!

 

Day 2 of the All-Stars for Starlight has just finished, and 30 players will return tomorrow for the conclusion of this kickoff event to the TonyBet Winter Festival.Local hero Kosta Papa leads the way, as he bagged a total of 1,495,000 in chips, while Stephan Daoust (1,390,000) and David Bolduc Hamel (1,360,000) are not too far behind.

Day 3 takes place tomorrow night at 7pm (Monday, February 1st), and will play down until we have our tournament champion!

In a few minutes we will publish the full list of player-reported chip counts, as well as the seating draw for Day 3.

See you tomorrow!

Top 3 going into Day 3:

Play has just entered level 26 here in the All-Stars for Starlight event, which means only 1 level remains before the conclusion of Day 2. There are still 34 players remaining at the moment, and those who still hold chips when time runs out will return tomorrow for the conclusion of the tournament.

Photographs from levels 24 and 25:

There is an interesting story brewing here in Day 2 of the All-Stars for Starlight event, as the current chip leader Ramnik Singh was nearly blinded out today, as he apparently slept through his alarm and only showed up at hand-for-hand, 6 levels into the day. His stack was blinded down from 149,000 to just 26,000 before he finally showed up. He moved all-in twice during hand-for-hand, winning in both cases, and has since grown his stack to an impressive 950,000 total.

Other current big stacks include Kosta Papa (roughly 900,000) and Francis L (roughly 820,000).

 

Photographs from level 21:

Players from Day 2 of the All-Stars for Starlight are enjoying a short break, and we’ve seen a number of eliminations occur since the bubble burst around one level ago. The field has dropped to 83 players during this time, as the pressure of the money-bubble is no longer present.

Kaylen Nichol took over the chip lead in the hand before the break, and now leads the field with just over 900,000. Here is a look at the top stacks as play enters level 21:

First Name | Prénom	Last Name | Nom	Stack | Tapis
Kaylen	Nichol	901,000
Francis	L	738,000
Daniel	Johnston	667,000
Zied Ben	Jaballah	623,000
Noy		594,000
Philip	Tse	591,000
Alberto	Scuderi	572,000

Photographs taken during level 20 – after the bubble burst:

After just 4 hands of hand for hand play, the bubble has burst as Denis Levesque was eliminated by Nick-Real Seide in the type of hand that often seems to characterize bubble eliminations.

The preflop action was standard: Denis open shoved, action folded around to Nick-Real in the bb (who covered Denis by quite a bit), who made the call. The hole cards were turned over.

Denis:
Nick-Real:

The flop was terrific for Denis: and the turn didn’t seem like much of a threat… until the was flipped over on the river! Nick-Real had made a runner-runner straight! And though it was a pretty bad beat, Denis was gracious about congratulating the table before making his way to the exit.

During hand for hand play we saw the beginning of level 20 in the tournament, which is significant because from now on, blinds will be 40 minutes in length.

There are now 118 players left in the tournament and the TD has asked for all tables to finish their current hand and stop – hand for hand action has begun… that is, assuming no one busts in this final hand!

Hand for hand action is a colourful affair here at Playground, because each dealer’s chair has a system of lights on it that communicate various things – including a bright red light that indicates that the current hand is complete during hand for hand play.