Playground Poker

After a wild couple of swings in which Richard doubled up (immediately after his triple-up), then lost an all in the very next hand, he finally met his final hand of cards when he shoved with a .

David Quang had a , which would have been catastrophic had the board not been dealt .

In the end, David’s trip-9s took the pot and ended Richard’s night. That said, it was an excellent tournament for Richard, who really held his own all night despite being short-stacked for much of the final table. Congratulations are due to him for an great 3rd place finish and the $110,000 cash prize. Well done!

With Richard Alsup holding only 1,000,000 out of a total of 26,880,000 chips on the table, to call him the short stack is almost an understatement. But he started off the 3-handed play in the hottest possible way, tripling up against both of his opponents.

In the end, when the players flipped over their cards they had to laugh: Richard had A-K, David A-7 and Daniel A-J. The board was dealt , and Richard continues on in a much stronger position.

After 2 hours of play 4-handed, Omid Shahbazian was eliminated at the hands of David Quang. Both players shoved all in preflop, and it was David’s 9s versus Omid’s 8s. The 9s triumphed on a board.

Congratulations to Omid for an excellent tournament. He goes home with the 4th place prize of $82,480. Well done! Now we are down to 3 players, and closer to crowning a champion.

Said El-Yousfi held a commanding chip lead just a little over an hour ago, but after 3 devastating hands in which he went all in preflop with A-K (losing every time), the table had a much more democratized chip count. It was in this context that Said and Omid Shahbazian ended up in a decisive hand that changed the course of the tournament’s  late stages.

This time, Said was all in preflop again. Only, unlike the other times, he wasn’t holding the A-K, but a . Omid’s ended up the winner in this hand that was dealt . It was a turnaround that left Said with less than 1,000,000 chips. Several hands later he shoved again, this time against Daniel Dubeau.

The hand started with a 375,000 raise by Daniel, only called by Said. The flop came down , and both players checked. A came on the turn, and Daniel checked. Said went all in, and after a short pause to think about it, Daniel called. All this occurred as time ran out on level 32, the 10th 60-minute level of the day.

Said flipped over his , and was dominated by Daniel’s . The river was a King, but Daniels ace had Said beat. Said finished an excellent tournament in 5th place, taking home $62,300.

It marks the second final table Said made in a week here at Playground Poker Club. So while he is surely disappointed in the finish considering his earlier chip lead, hopefully he will look back on this week at a later date and consider it a great success.

Giancarlo Palleschi found a hand he wanted to go all the way with, and so a few hands ago he shoved preflop with . Unfortunately for him, he ran into the of Richard Alsup.

When the board was dealt , he ended up losing 95% of his stack, forking over more than 2,000,000 in chips to his rival seated on his left. At this point he was down to less than 2 big blinds, and so he found himself shoving a few hands later with a much more marginal . Again, he faced off against Richard. And again, Richard took the pot down – this time with a .

The board was dealt A-J-3-3-Q, and Richard grabbed the last few of Giancarlo’s chips to end his night. Giancarlo had an excellent tournament however, and so congratulations are in order. His 6th place finish brought him a $47,300 prize. Not bad for a weekend trip to Montreal from Toronto!

Because all five players had (relatively) similar chip counts and also because it has been quite a long weekend, there was recent talk of an ICM chop. However, there were a couple of hold-outs, and the deal went bust.

Now at level 32, the blinds stay at 75K/150K and the hands continue to be dealt.