There are a few recent arrivals of note in the field today, including Will Molson, Edward Hislop, Miguel Goncalo, Jonathan Marrie, and Max Droege.

On the other hand, there are still plenty of players still hanging back – as one player put it, “I just can’t personally see what circumstances I’d ever like to get it in playing 250bb!”

Players are on their first break of the day.

The poker calendar is packed at this time of year, which has the great benefit for players of increasing the potential for overlays in events with guaranteed prize pools – something that looks possible in the Playground 1000.

There are 355 total entries so far, meaning that 145 more are required to match the prize pool guarantee. It’s likely this event will get very close to the number required to cover but still fall short – meaning that there could very well be an overlay by the time Day 1C and Day 2 registration periods close.

There’s still a ton of time to register for the event and make a claim on some of that overlay money – registration (1 entry and 1 re-entry permitted) is open throughout the day!

Dean Murphy – who seems, historically, to have a nut-like (but not) hands beaten by things like Quads and straight flushes an inordinate amount of the time – has already lost to Quads today, and is down to around 40K.

Luckily for Murphy his was facing Mingzhe Zhang’s and nothing stronger as Murphy raised to 2K, was 3-bet to 5.5K and responded with a shove, which was quickly called by Zhang.

The board ran out – safe for both players – and Murphy will have to continue to find opportunities to chip back up…

Level 1 in Day 1C of the Playground 1000 continues, but today as predicted there are a lot more players joining in the fun – with the rest of the day left to enter or re-enter (there are no re-entries yet today), there are already just under 100 players seated in the event and the flow of new entries continues steadily.

Photos from level 1

The tournament director has made the introductory announcements and players have assembled around the starting group of tables for the day, and with that, action is underway in Day 1C of the Playground 1000. So far there are 76 players seated with more arriving every couple of minutes.

We have noticed several notable players in the field today, including Eric Benhamron, who most recently was the runner up in the Playground 500 event during the Playground 7th Anniversary series. IN addition, we see twins Luciano and Marcello Iacovella, 2-time WSOP bracelet winner André Boyer, Dave Jeanneau-Cyr, Jason Conforti, and Walter Asatoorian.

It’s a beautiful day in the Montreal area – the weather is perfect to take the short drive to the South Shore to Playground Poker Club to play Day 1C in the Playground 1000. There are 107 Day 2 qualifiers so far (out of 236 entries), and the final Day 1C is set to start in just minutes. This is the final Day 1 in the event, and one of the characteristics of a Day 1 like this is that A) it attracts the bulk of satellite qualifiers, and (as a consequence), B) the buy-ins swell as well, as more experienced players estimate that the field may be slightly softer with less experienced players.

Whether or not the field is actually softer is up for some debate – just because a player qualified through a satellite doesn’t mean they’re not pretty good – but regardless, this promises to be by far the largest field so far, and should see a bump in the number of re-entries as well.

Today is not the last chance to get into the event, however – that will be tomorrow on Day 2 in the tournament. Players will have the opportunity to buy directly into Day 2 during the first two levels of play.

Play on Day 1C will continue through 10 levels of 60 minutes each, and everyone has the opportunity to enter and re-enter a single time at any time during the day. Players will start with 100,000 tournament chips, and their target today to make Day 2 in good “tournament health” will be to finish with something around 218,000 – the overall chip average of Day 2 qualifiers. Anyone who manages to accumulate more than 450,000 will find themselves among the chip leaders going to Day 2 – a challenging but worthwhile goal considering the $500,000 prize pool guarantee in place!

Good luck on the felts today!