Regular big-event player Marco Caza has jumped into a big lead in Day 1C, having recently grown his stack all the way to 470K+ in chips. Interestingly enough, although the chip leader for much of the day is seated immediately to his right, he didn’t get the chips from there – Robert Beaulieu still has a very healthy stack.

When we visited the table, Caza was smiling and disclaiming his huge stack in a very self-deprecating way, but the fact is that he’s a superbly talented and experienced tournament player who must be considered dangerous any time he has a stack.

We were able to prepare a new top-5 leaderboard during the recent break in Day 1C of the Playground 1000 and we found it to be relatively consistent with the last version. Robert Beaulieu is in the lead with a very solid 377.1K stack – in fact this would be a perfectly reasonable amount with which to begin play on Day 2. New on the leaderboard is Darren Keyes – a very dangerous player…

In a battle of the Luigis, Lou Paulozza has won a pot against one-time chip leader Luigi Taddei. Taddei opened the action with a limp from utg+1, and action folded around to Paulozza in the small blind, who raised to 2K. The bb folded and Taddei made the call – the flop was dealt:

A relatively dry flop, and both players checked. The turn came and Paulozzq led out for 3K into the 6.5K pot, and Taddei made the call. The river was the , and again Paulozza led – this time for 5K – cheap enough for Taddei to call under almost any circumstances. He did call and flipped over the for top pair – only to see Paulozza’s for a rivered straight.

Play in Day 1C of the Playground 1000 has now begun in level 5, as players return from a break during which tournament staff removed the green T25 chips from play. We took the opportunity to put together a top-5 leaderboard for the Day to this point.

Note that Luigi Taddei, the current chip leader, and Francesco Ciarallo are seated side-by-side on table 49. This will be the second table to break today, but when that will occur is anyone’s guess, considering that players keep on joining the tournament and play so far has seemed rather cautious.

Here are a few more photos taken as the field continues to fill out in Day 1C.

During the first break we weren’t able to complete an exhaustive look at the field to find the chip leaders, but we did find a few players that seem to have vaulted into the lead – most notably, Omid Shahbazian, who is the current chip leader with over 200K in his stack. Behind him are Robert Beaulieu (181K) and Luigi Taddei (165K).

Play has now resumed in level 3.