2018 Playground Winter Festival News

Event #1 – Day 2 seating draw (with counts)

2018/01/17 - 5:34 by Playground Poker

After a total of 670 runners took a spot at the table during one or more starting flights in Event #1 of the Playground Winter Festival, there were 128 stacks that qualified for Day 2 in the event. One player managed to qualify twice for Day 2 – Marcello Simonitti – so his smaller stack has been removed from play and there were 127 players in the seating draw for Day 2.

Here are the starting positions and chip counts for the 127 remaining players.

First Name \| Prénom	Last Name \| Nom	Seat \| Siège	Stack \| Tapis
Rami	Hammoud	Table 49 - Seat 1	56,000
Martin	Nguyen	Table 49 - Seat 2	57,500
Nicolas	Miron	Table 49 - Seat 3	106,000
Jason	Guiley	Table 49 - Seat 4	50,000
Frederic	Stlouis	Table 49 - Seat 5	40,000
Yu Chen	Chen	Table 49 - Seat 7	197,500
Martin	Dufour	Table 49 - Seat 8	77,000
Ryan	Jensen	Table 49 - Seat 9	71,000
Christian	Soucy	Table 50 - Seat 1	125,000
Therlegrand	Faustin	Table 50 - Seat 2	88,000
Yan	Nadeau	Table 50 - Seat 3	254,500
Mitcheal	Ferguson	Table 50 - Seat 4	105,000
Sebastien	Proulx	Table 50 - Seat 6	81,500
Pascal	Gregoire	Table 50 - Seat 7	105,000
Louis	Lam	Table 50 - Seat 8	92,500
Jonathan	Bussieres	Table 50 - Seat 9	156,500
Charanjeev	Malhotra	Table 51 - Seat 1	105,500
Sebastien	Brazeau	Table 51 - Seat 3	45,500
Richard	Sysko	Table 51 - Seat 4	86,500
Gaetan	Perreault	Table 51 - Seat 5	53,000
Todd	Des Biens	Table 51 - Seat 6	62,500
Roy	Abras	Table 51 - Seat 7	97,500
Pascal	Quirion	Table 51 - Seat 8	214,500
Ricky	Campanelli	Table 51 - Seat 9	42,500
Alexandre	Cote-St-Louis	Table 52 - Seat 1	136,500
Natalia	Nogina	Table 52 - Seat 2	44,500
Sylvain	Lacasse	Table 52 - Seat 3	128,000
Jean Luc	Joseph	Table 52 - Seat 4	206,500
Aaron Roy	Parsons	Table 52 - Seat 5	59,000
Daniel	Thibodeau	Table 52 - Seat 6	81,500
Nicolas	Laliberte	Table 52 - Seat 7	156,000
Eric	Ranger	Table 52 - Seat 9	27,000
Frederic	Gagne	Table 53 - Seat 1	82,000
Cristian	Muset	Table 53 - Seat 2	78,500
Christian	Barrett	Table 53 - Seat 3	150,000
Dominick	Brunet	Table 53 - Seat 4	50,000
Luc	Lavoie	Table 53 - Seat 5	78,500
Hagay	Brener	Table 53 - Seat 6	129,000
Joseph	Kennedy	Table 53 - Seat 8	85,000
Steven Nicholas	Curkovic	Table 53 - Seat 9	117,000
Pierre Olivier	Guay	Table 54 - Seat 1	43,000
Jeff	Longpre	Table 54 - Seat 2	91,500
Jean-David	Rivard	Table 54 - Seat 3	46,000
Peter	Liakopoulos	Table 54 - Seat 4	277,000
Mathieu	Guindon	Table 54 - Seat 5	12,500
Patrick	Fournier	Table 54 - Seat 7	61,000
Hashem Ghasem	Mohammad	Table 54 - Seat 8	38,000
Daniel	Hamelin	Table 54 - Seat 9	29,000
James	Bedard	Table 55 - Seat 1	135,500
Charles	La Boissonniere	Table 55 - Seat 2	234,500
George	Ciuciureanu	Table 55 - Seat 4	66,000
Justin	Hung	Table 55 - Seat 5	324,000
Carl	Des Granges	Table 55 - Seat 6	101,000
Daniel	Lemay	Table 55 - Seat 7	50,000
Nicolas	Majdalani	Table 55 - Seat 8	161,000
Jerry Joseph	Jaber	Table 55 - Seat 9	89,500
Chris	Arvanitis	Table 56 - Seat 1	62,500
Brian	Hodhod	Table 56 - Seat 2	86,000
Marc	Touloute	Table 56 - Seat 3	62,000
Jesse	Brandow	Table 56 - Seat 4	69,500
Mathieu	Fontaine Raposo	Table 56 - Seat 5	170,500
Christopher	Tavares	Table 56 - Seat 6	288,000
Mathieu	Daigneault	Table 56 - Seat 7	48,500
Christopher	King	Table 56 - Seat 8	87,000
Jason	Mota	Table 56 - Seat 9	88,000
Jack	Penda	Table 57 - Seat 1	26,000
Francis	Fortin Chevalier	Table 57 - Seat 2	155,500
Frederick	Seiffert	Table 57 - Seat 3	80,500
Marcello	Simonetti	Table 57 - Seat 4	55,000
Franco	Sicondolfi	Table 57 - Seat 5	75,000
Mario	Page	Table 57 - Seat 6	84,000
Hicham	Hammoud	Table 57 - Seat 7	67,500
Eric	Massie	Table 57 - Seat 8	64,000
Maurice	Langlois	Table 57 - Seat 9	36,000
Michael	Lawson	Table 59 - Seat 1	37,500
Frederick	Lessard	Table 59 - Seat 2	88,000
Stephane	Matteau	Table 59 - Seat 3	84,500
Ali	Awada	Table 59 - Seat 4	61,500
Richard	Gagnon	Table 59 - Seat 5	93,000
Michel	Lamarche	Table 59 - Seat 6	90,000
Patrick	Gatfalvi	Table 59 - Seat 7	42,000
Simon	Bissonnette-Du-Cap	Table 59 - Seat 8	97,000
Louis-Charles Junior	Levros	Table 59 - Seat 9	61,500
Nabil	Nahoul	Table 60 - Seat 1	64,000
Lee	Chanwoo	Table 60 - Seat 2	100,500
Kevork	Bijian	Table 60 - Seat 3	87,000
Maxime	Asselin Blain	Table 60 - Seat 4	56,000
Francois	Gagne	Table 60 - Seat 5	88,000
Francois	Jenin	Table 60 - Seat 6	44,000
Sebastien	Drolet-Poitras	Table 60 - Seat 7	203,000
Sharron	Patenaude	Table 60 - Seat 8	105,000
Colin	Scheckman	Table 60 - Seat 9	111,500
Daniel	Le	Table 63 - Seat 1	53,000
Robert	Gariepy	Table 63 - Seat 2	263,500
Adam	Hussen	Table 63 - Seat 3	92,000
Catherine	St-Pierre	Table 63 - Seat 4	162,000
Anderson	Frank-Graham	Table 63 - Seat 5	197,000
Allan	Puzantian	Table 63 - Seat 6	204,500
Ryan	Parsons	Table 63 - Seat 7	132,500
Douglas	Best	Table 63 - Seat 8	165,000
Michael	Macdonell	Table 63 - Seat 9	249,500
David	Sorgente	Table 64 - Seat 1	168,000
Francesco	Presta	Table 64 - Seat 2	124,000
Peter	Zhou	Table 64 - Seat 3	52,000
Andrew	Molotchko	Table 64 - Seat 4	55,500
Jonathan Patrick	Marrie	Table 64 - Seat 5	285,500
Francois	Bergeron	Table 64 - Seat 6	68,500
Arnold	Yaxley	Table 64 - Seat 7	86,500
Mario	Defoy	Table 64 - Seat 8	41,000
Donald	Ridewood	Table 64 - Seat 9	30,500
Pavel	Covaliov	Table 67 - Seat 1	75,000
Scott	Woodard	Table 67 - Seat 2	241,000
Albert	Nguyen	Table 67 - Seat 3	342,000
Nick	Nickoletopoulos	Table 67 - Seat 5	168,000
Guy	Lebrun	Table 67 - Seat 6	127,500
Saad	Badreddine	Table 67 - Seat 7	102,000
Michael	Chouinard	Table 67 - Seat 8	47,000
Hugo	Marquis	Table 67 - Seat 9	152,000
Nicholas	Soller	Table 68 - Seat 1	61,000
Alain	Berard	Table 68 - Seat 2	120,000
Kosta	Papa	Table 68 - Seat 3	108,000
Janet	Humphreys	Table 68 - Seat 4	68,000
Stephane	Lalancette	Table 68 - Seat 5	109,000
Tony	Lei	Table 68 - Seat 6	50,500
Andre	Boyer	Table 68 - Seat 7	76,500
Etienne	Sauve	Table 68 - Seat 8	28,000
Jean-Michel	Thibodeau	Table 68 - Seat 9	112,000

Overlay Alert for Event #1!

2018/01/16 - 14:04 by

Poker players interested in extra money – which is to say all of you – should pay special attention to Event #1, which looks like it may have an overlay on the prize pool! At least 280 more entries will be required in the final starting flight tonight in order to match the guarantee.

What’s an overlay, you ask? When there’s a prize pool guarantee, the overlay is the amount that has to be made up between the prize pool generated by buy-ins and the guaranteed amount. It’s a great value for players because the tournament is just a little bit easier to navigate with fewer players in the field – but the prize pool remains the same!

Day 1D in Event #1 begins at 7:00pm tonight with late registration available through the end of the first break following level 4. That means players can jump in any time until 9:15pm tonight. And remember – as a next-day re-entry event, you can play tonight even if you’ve already played in a Day 1. Even if you’ve already qualified for Day 2 – there’s no harm in trying to build up a bigger stack that can take on the likes of Albert Nguyen, the overall chip leader so after the 3 starting flights already in the books.

Starting today: Event #2, the Crazy $80

2018/01/15 - 10:38 by

Today’s Event #2 in the Playground Winter Festival is a tournament that debuted just a couple of months ago in the 2017 Playground Poker Fall Classic. The nickname for the event is “The Crazy $80” and it’s a $70 + $10 NL Hold’em event. The event features 4 Day 1s – one a day from today until Thursday – and each Day 1 allows unlimited re-entries during the first 4 levels of play. The other interesting feature of this tournament is that instead of playing through a set number of levels, each Day 1 will play until 10% of the field remains.

With a $20,000 prize pool guarantee, this tourney is a considerable upgrade on the usual afternoon tournaments, and with several chances available to qualify for Day 2, it won’t be surprising to see several players qualify multiple times with the goal of taking the best stack to the final day.

Cards will be in the air in about 30 minutes!

Day 1B – Cards are in the air

Level: 2
Small Blind: 75
Big Blind: 150
Button Ante: 0
Chip Average: 20K
Remaining: 76
Entries: 76

2018/01/14 - 19:34 by Jôle Simard

Day 1A of Event 1 is now in the books, and Day 1B is starting level 2. With 69 players at the tables, the nightly flight is shaping up to be well attended. Players will try to survive 14 levels, and those who succeed will merit a seat into Wednesday night’s Day 2, alongside 34 players who did just that this afternoon.

Woodard finishes strong

Level: 14
Small Blind: 1.2K
Big Blind: 2.4K
Button Ante: 2.4K
Chip Average: 101.8K
Remaining: 34
Entries: 173

2018/01/14 - 19:14 by Shawn McCrory

As Day 1A was drawing to a close, the big stacks started to gobble up the small stacks, and Scott Woodard continued his fearless play. While many players were simply waiting out the last few hands of the day, Woodard showed everyone that he still had his foot on the gas pedal.

With less than 10 minutes left to play in the day, Woodard opened from the cut off to 5.5K and got called by Cory Garrison Jones, immediately to his left, and both blinds. Woodard c-bet 12K on a flop, only to have Jones raise all-in for 50K. Woodard made the call after only a few seconds of reflection and tabled . Jones turned over his cards to show . Woodard faded the overs and the flush draw as the board ran out and scooped a big pot to bring his stack up to 241K.

34 players remained as the final buzzer sounded to bring Day 1A to a close. Here are the chip leaders:

First Name \| Prénom	Last Name \| Nom	Stack \| Tapis
Robert	Gariepy	263,500
Scott	Woodard	241,000
Allan	Punzantian	205,000
Nicolas	Laliberte	156,000
Douglas	Best	140,000

Welcome to the 2018 Playground Winter Festival

Level: 1
Small Blind: 50
Big Blind: 100
Button Ante: 0
Chip Average: 20K
Remaining: 89
Entries: 89

2018/01/14 - 11:17 by

January 14th has arrived, and with it, the beginning of the latest edition of the Playground Winter Festival. This year’s festival features 17 events to be held over 18 days, ranging from the $70 + $10 NL Hold’em Re-entry event called “The Crazy $80” all the way to the Main Event, the $1,000 + $100 Playground 1000 tournament with its $500,000 GTD! As always, there’s something for everyone in a Playground Poker Club festival.

The event getting the whole thing kicked off is another $125 + $35 NL Hold’em event, and as we’ve done for the past few tournaments of this kind, the $35 tournament fee will be given as a charitable donation. This time around, the proceeds will be disbursed to a variety of local charities in the area.

Players start with 20,000 in tournament chips and will play through a total of 14 levels today. As usual, there will be a total of 4 Day 1s in this event and players are invited to enter each Day 1 in an attempt to qualify for Day 2 on Wednesday. Anyone who qualifies through multiple Day 1 starting flights will take only their best stack forward to Day 2.

Play is now underway in Day 1A of Event #1, and attendance even in Level 1 is already approaching 100 players. Late registration is available today until 1:15pm.

Good luck!