Less than five months after its grand opening, the Playground Poker Club in Montreal went All-in by hosting its first major tournament series entitled the Playground Poker Classic consisting of 15 events over 2 weeks which in addition to the big prize pools, the winners collected specially crafted championship bracelets to commemorate the series.
The Playground Poker Classic attracted a number of accomplished poker pros from Montreal and other parts of Canada who saw great value in the series including WSOP bracelet winners Gavin Smith and Pascal Lefrancois. Other notable players with impressive tournament cash earnings included Anh Van Nguyen, former COPC heads-up champ Ben Leblond, Samuel Chartier, Philippe Plouffe, Eric Afriat, Jonathan Driscoll, George Caragiorgas, Brian Hodhod and Shayne Khanna. There were even some local celebrities from the professional hockey community and members of the famous Ang lil family who are very involved in the local poker scene.
The PPC had something for all players tastes from No-Limit events, Pot Limit Omaha, Freeze-outs, Rebuys, Turbos, Deepstacks and even a $5000 Freeroll. Equally important, throughout the entire tournament series the cash table action was thriving and we even saw the $96000 Bad Beat Jackpot get hit last week, an Ace Jack full house beaten by Quad Jacks. Playground’s bad beat jackpot is always pre-loaded with $20000 and builds up fast.
The $500 Heads-Up tournament was capped at 32 players creating a prize pool of $16000. After five rounds of play, Anthony Greco defeated Rob Brown in the final heads up match to win $7,500 and a championship bracelet, Rob Brown won $3,700 while Levon Dedeyan and Fuyuki Ikura who were heads up 2 months ago in Playground’s $1000 No Limit event, each got $1,600 for finishing in 3rd and 4th.
The showcase event for the PPC was the signature $3000 NLH Deepstack. It’s rare to see high buy-in events in Canada except at the major casinos out west who have hosted the British Columbia Poker Championships, the Fallsview Poker Classic and COPC tournaments and these events have been running for several years. The fact that 75 players made the $3000 buy-in for this event first time around and last month’s $1000 event had almost 200 players, demonstrates that there is an appetite for higher buy-in tournaments with good structures and Playground delivered.
The winner of the $3000 Deepstack was none other than Pascal Lefrancois who started 2 hours late due to just getting in from playing in the European tour. Pascal managed to build up a chip lead in the earlier rounds of the tournament but started at the final table as one of the short stacks, but after a couple of bold moves he secured the chip lead and held it until the end when he went head-up against Marathon George Caragiorgas.
Originally Posted at CanadaPoker.com“
