Elaine Rawn has just doubled through François Goulet in a surprising hand just now. Daune Fernandez opened the action with a preflop raise to 215K, and Rawn followed it up by shoving for her last 1.135M. Next up was Goulet in the sb who chose to re-shove over the top. That was enough to get Eric out of the bb and chase Fernandez from the hand as well.

Rawn:
Goulet:

Goulet had a much stronger and more “typical” starting hand, but it all came down to the community cards. The run out was as follows:

for a turned straight and the pot.

Jaered Daniel Besse has moved mostly under the radar during this entire tournament, but in two hands almost back to back he has added over 4M to his stack and moved into the chip lead.

In the first hand, Eric Schanck 3-bet to 550K only to have Besse 4-bet shove right behind… The other players got out of the way and eventually Schanck folded as well, and Besse picked up about a 900K pot.

Just a few minutes later, Besse raised to 250K from the hj. Action folded to Daune Fernandez in the bb who elected to raise to 725K. Besse insta-jammed and Fernandez called just as quickly.

Fernandez:
Besse:

Besse was in a great spot that got even better on the flop of . The baby cards continued coming – turn and river and he pushed his remaining 3.8M forward to be counted. Daune paid off the bet and Besse is now playing over 7.6M in chips and is the clear chip leader with 14 players left.

Players have taken another break in the Playground 1000 and we took the opportunity to build a full list of chip counts for the 14 players remaining. The tournament chip leader at the moment is Daune Fernandez, who is playing a stack of approaching 6.5M in chips. David Sorgente is hot on his heels, playing currently with 5.8M in chips.

David Sorgente has re-emerged among the chip leaders after winning a huge pot with plenty of action preflop to add to the total he stacked at the end.

Omid Shahbazian got things started with a raise to 180K from utg+1. John Helou was interested and flat called from two seats over. Action then turned to Griffin Benger, who 3-bet shoved for just over a million in chips.

David Sorgente was the next to act, and surprised people a little by just calling Benger’s all-in – and action returned to Shahbazian. He thought about things, and asked Sorgente how much he was playing behind (around 2.8M), and somewhat reluctantly folded. Helou didn’t take long to fold either and the cards were exposed.

Griffin:
Sorgente:

The flop was solid for the Jacks: and didn’t bring any flush problems with it. The turn came next and all the was left was the river… and the spelled the end of Benger’s tournament.

15th place: Griffin Benger

Here are a few shots of the final 15 players in the tournament. Martin Dej was the most recent player eliminated, after just a couple of hands on his new table.

Play in the Playground 1000 has resumed a relatively rapid pace, and the tournament is already down to just 16 players remaining – 2 tables. As per the rules of the tournament, there has been a full seating redraw, and play now continues on tables 62 and 70 in the back corner of the Tournament Hall.