After a little more than 12 hours of play, the Playground WSOP-C 2018 Event #4 $5,000 + $300 Super High Roller Day 1 has come to a close. The players started off with 250,000 chips, and the tournament sported a $250,000 guaranteed prize pool. It also allowed for unlimited re-entries until the end of the 10th level of play.

In total, 11 players made it to the end and were able to bag chips for Day 2.

As early as level 4, Paul Klann had already doubled his stack and both Mike Leah and Jason James were right behind. In the next few levels, Daniel Henderson climbed the leader board quickly. By level 7 Daniel was in the lead with more than 800,000 chips, with Jason and Paul rounding up the top three.

In level 9, Jeff Cormier, who had never hit higher than 5th position on the leader boards, became the first millionnaire of the tournament. By then Daniel Henderson had dropped to 2nd place, and Christian Harder made his first appearance on the board in 3rd position. When the break after level 10 came around we went back to the felts to count the stacks and by then we had 4 millionaires: Jason James, Alexander Wong, Daniel Henderson & Shane Currey.

At this point in the tournament, there were already 74 entries, and it was decided that the original schedule (to play until the final table) would be revised. The remaining players and the tournament director conferred, and it was decided to only play 3 more levels, and return on Day 2.

The last complete chip count at 16 players showed Daniel Henderson making a huge comeback to first place with almost 4,000,000 chips. The next player behind him was Jeffrey Cormier with 2,346,000 chips. When the time came to put the chips in the bags leader Daniel Henderson had amassed an incredible 6,174,000 chips. The only other player to have more than 2 million chips is Jean-Serge Baril, who bagged 2,410,000.

Play will resume on Friday, August 31st at 1:00pm, and play will continue until we crown a winner.

We are now down to 16 players in the Super High Roller and as the players from the broken table go to their new seats, we took a look around to determine every player’s chip count.

Daniel Henderson is the chip leader with 3,926,000 chips, followed by Jeffrey Cormier with 2,346,000.

Event #4 – Super High Roller – has been running since 1:00pm and as the tournament hit the beginning of level 13, the clock was paused to consider options for the end of the day. After some deliberation that included all of the players still in, the final decision – achieved by red/black vote – was that play would continue through level 13, which will be followed by a short break, and then play will continue through 2 more levels of 45 minutes each. Play will resume on Day 2 at 1:00pm.

Play continues in level 13.

The tournament director has just released the prize pool and payout information for the Super High Roller event in the WSOP-C Playground. With 75 total entries, the event will pay 9 players – in other words, everyone who makes the final table will also cash in the event. It’s going to be some kind of bubble in the tourney!

Meanwhile, the tournament is now down to 24 players remaining. When the tournament was rescheduled to today, the original idea was to play down to the final table. However, with this many players, that schedule is not very practical, so the TD will confer with players at the end of next break about how they wish to proceed.

Play has resumed in the Super High Roller tournament in level 11 and from now on, the tournament is a freezeout! The impact of every decision is higher and the stacks will grow more quickly as short-stacked players are eliminated as blind pressure grows.

The leaders to this point in the tournament have fairly uniform stacks: between 1M and 1.1M each, and there are 4 of them:

Jason James is the leader, but only by about 3,000 in chips over Alexander Wong. Needless to say, there are plenty of players with just average stacks now or even less who remain very very dangerous…

Noeung Troeung was all in from the bb and action was back on Shane Currey on the button. Currey was covered, but it was close, and both players had about average stacks. Shane thought for a few moments but then made the call, stabbing a pile of red T25K chips into the felt to communicate his decision. The hole cards were exposed:

Noeung:
Shane:

The flop was safe enough for the Queens: and the turn was equally safe: . The dealer knocked the table, burned, and dealt the river: – a disaster for Noeung! Shane doubled up to just under 1M in chips, while Noeung was left with about 10bb.

The players are now on break, and this break represents the last chance for players to re-enter – the tournament will be a freezeout when play resumes.