Ema Zajmovic has taken an early lead in Day 1c, having built up a stack of over 93K in the first three levels of play today. We got word of a big hand she was involved in holding pocket 9s on a 99Q flop – and her opponent held pocket Queens!

Behind Ema on the early leaderboard are a few players who have doubled their starting stack, but only about 4-5 players have done so – which makes sense considering that just 7 players have been eliminated so far.

Ema Zajmovic

Some other reports from Twitter:

Things not going that well @PlaygroundPoker for the @TonyBetPoker Main Event. 10k from 30k starting.

— Steven Kerr (@SkinnySteve) February 7, 2016

Starting stack 30K in @TonyBetPoker Winter Festival @PlayGroundPoker in Montreal so far so good with 35K at first break 🙂

— Isabelle Mercier (@IsabelleNoMercy) February 7, 2016

Today’s starting flight has brought out a few big-name players to the tables, including such stars as Will Molson, Mike Leah, Laurence Grondin, Patrick Braga, Isabelle Mercier, and Eric Afriat. Players Club members George Caragiorgas and Philippe Plouffe have also taken their seats, as have past champions in Playground events like Michael Korovine and Sammy Popatia.

Others in the field who have the skills to make a deep run include Playground tournament regulars like Yannick Labattaglia, Jon Pentefountas, George Kazarian, Levon Dedayan, and Qiang Dong, among many others.

Players are now taking their first break of the day. Late registration continues after this break, so there’s still lots of time to join the event.

The tournament director has just made his introductory announcements, wrapping up with the famous command to the dealers: “Shuffle up and Deal”! And with that, cards are now in the air for today’s Day 1c starting flight in the TonyBet Winter Festival Main Event.

Today is already proving to be busier than the previous starting days, with 130 players already seated as play gets underway and late registrants arriving at a regular clip.

It’s another special day at Playground Poker Club for two other reasons – first, there is another afternoon hockey game, and following yesterday’s huge victory against Edmonton, people have high hopes for another win! As well, of course it’s Super Bowl Sunday – and you can be sure that the big game will be shown on a huge majority of the 70 HD screens around the room!

Day 1c of the TonyBet Winter Festival Main Event is the 3rd of 3 starting flights in this $1,000 + $100 NL Hold’em tournament with a $500,000 guaranteed prize pool. Traditionally the final starting day is the largest, as satellite seat holders and players who decided in advance to stick to a single entry in the tourney all tend to choose this day. This means that the final starting day can be significantly busier than any previous starting flight.

320 entries have already joined the tournament so far, and of those 320, 88 have qualified for Day 2. Remember that players who qualify for Day 2 on more than one starting day will see their smaller stack (or stacks) retired from play, and only their largest Day 1 total will be used upon the restart for Day 2.

Late registration today is available until 4pm – which is to say that players may join the tournament any time until the end of the break following level 6. Just 2 levels after that will be a dinner break, following which players will return for the final 5 levels to be played on Day 1c.

Good luck!