Late registration has closed now that the break following level 6 is over, and today’s second starting flight had 183 total entries, bringing the grand total of entries so far up to 320.

The chip leaders at this stage in the tournament have around 100K or more in chips, with the leader at 119,100. Gameboy, the leader at the last break, is not among the top 5 but he is still in the mix with about 95K.

Players Club member and all-around poker champion Mike Leah has just joined the field. Mike is a pretty fantastic chip accumulator in his own right, and time will tell if he can manage to get up among the leaders today.

There are a few other players of note in the field – mostly due to exceptional past performances at tournaments here at Playground Poker Club.

• Eric Afriat – Eric has had some success here on his home turf at Playground Poker, but his biggest victories have come in Las Vegas and Florida. Eric is a WPT Champion and a long-time high performer in big hold’em events.
• Jiachen Gong – Jiachen had a tournament breakthrough last summer when he made the final table of the $2,500 Hollywood Poker Open Main Event and earlier in the year when he made the unofficial final table of the $5,000 WPT Fallsview.
• Kevin Macdonald – Kevin joins us from the Maritimes for big events and has had an exceptional run of success here over the years, including a 5th place in the most recent $1,100 buy-in here last August.
• Philippe Belley – Philippe has had a lot of success in big tournaments in the Montreal area, including a win in the $1.1K WPT Warm-up event in the most recent Playground Poker Spring Classic.
• Azim “Sammy” Popatia – Sammy had a run of strong finishes in events at Playground in 2015, including final table appearances in 2 separate $1.1K events and a deep run in the most recent WPT Montreal.

Play in Day 1b began about 20 minutes ago and there are already 115 players at the tables with more arriving every few minutes.

Players from out of town will have an extra-interesting experience this afternoon because there’s a rare daytime game for the local hockey team. Playground Poker Club really comes alive during big events – but even more so when there’s a hockey game featured on all 70 HD screens around the room! The game starts at 2, so there’s a little while to go until then, but several players have arrived wearing jerseys and caps and the like to support their team.

The dealers have just finished their pre-tournament briefing and have taken their seats at the tables, ready to welcome players for Day 1b of the TonyBet Winter Festival Main Event!

Yesterday’s Day 1a flight saw 137 entries join the tournament, and today’s Day 1b should hit that number early and easily surpass it, as a lot more players are available to play on a Saturday.

This is a next-day re-entry event, which means that anyone who played yesterday – whether they qualified for Day 2 or not – may give it another go today. A player who has already qualified may wish to try to end with a larger stack (only the largest count from a starting flight continues to Day 2), or a player who couldn’t make it through yesterday may try again.

Considering the $500,000 guaranteed prize pool and the high number of online and live satellite winners in the field, it’s clear that there’s plenty of value for a player to try to make it to Day 2 multiple times!

As was the case yesterday, players will start with a 30K stack and blinds will be 45-minutes in length. Late registration is open to the end of the break following level 6, and there will be a dinner break (45 mins) following level 8.

Good luck today!