As the year 2018 comes to an end, we reflect on the amazing ride we’ve had these past 12 months at Playground. The year had a little bit of everything: 2 Bad Beat Jackpots over $1,000,000, the WSOP Circuit at Playground, the MILLIONS North America with a $10,000,000 guaranteed Main Event, and a new EGD section! The evolution this past year was especially explosive, and as a result, the Playground Complex has more than ever to offer our customers!
Jackpots
One of the things we’re best known for at Playground are our great poker cash game promotions, and paramount among these is the Primary Bad Beat Jackpot. This year was an amazing year for Primary BBJs – twice during 2018 the jackpot grew to over $1M! A jackpot of $1,375,265 was won on April 27 (pictured), and then in early October the Jackpot had climbed to $1,249,643 when it was hit yet again!
The Jackpot in April was hit right in the midst of the MILLIONS action, and represents one of the largest poker jackpots ever awarded. The jackpot hand was worthy of such acclaim as well, as quad Queens were beat by a Royal Flush! The hand in the October Jackpot was slightly more modest: quad Nines were beat by a Straight Flush to the Jack.
Festivals
The Playground Winter Festival was the first major series on the 2018 calendar. It was headed by the Playground 1000, a 499-player competition that had Jaered Besse face Ruben Perceval in an epic heads-up battle. Jaered took it down, winning $79,070.
Next up was MILLIONS North America with a record-breaking $10,000,000 guaranteed Main Event! The tournament was highly anticipated on the local scene, but also by the whole poker world. Even on a global scale, you 
don’t see many $5,300 buy-in tournaments that guarantee 2,000 entries! Taylor Black (holding the magnificent MILLIONS trophy) took down the mammoth event and took home $1,400,000. Two other millionaires were crowned in the event: Darryll Fish – $1,200,000 (2nd place), and Anthony Ruberto – $1,000,000 (3rd place).
Our 3rd festival of the year was the WSOP-C Playground, which marked the very first visit of this legendary poker 
brand to our club. It was an immense honour to have our name associated with the World Series of Poker, and an even bigger honour to break the WSOP-C all-time attendance record for the Main Event with 2,401 entries! We also broke Playground’s personal record for number of entries in a single starting flight with 712 in Colossus Day 1G, and crushed it a few days later with 1016 entries in Day 1D of the Main Event!
To say that the WSOP-C Playground was a success would be the understatement of the year. Congrats to Jason Mandanici-Turcot, who took $125,130 in winning the Colossus, and Danny Freitas (holding his dog) who won the Main Event and took home $294,930. It should be mentioned that Danny had just finished 6th out of a 3503-entry field in the Colossus, for a $22,000 prize. What an unbeliavable series for him!
Finally, in November, we once again hosted the WPT Montreal, which saw the WPT500, the WPT Main Tour and WPTDeepStacks events presented in a single festival for the first time ever. The WPT Main Event was a $5,300 buy-in tournament, won by Patrick Serda of Winnipeg ($855,000). To accomplish this, he had to come from behind in a heads-up match facing none other than WPT Champion’s Club member Ema Zajmovic. Ema was playing her 3rd WPT final table at Playground in just 2 years!
Expansion
The last 2 months of the year brought a great deal of anticipation about what was coming in the new building in the Playground Complex, and on December 13 at 9:00am, the secret was out: this was the home of Playground’s new Electronic Gaming Devices space. The EGD rumour had been going around for some time, and on the second day of our 8-Year Anniversary Series, the new gaming floor opened to the public, with over 300 machines available for entertainment. Since then, in just two weeks, our EGDs have paid out $144,420 in jackpots!
EGDs, the latest evolution of Playground, welcome a new clientele into our gaming complex, and we are very excited about the expansion. The new section is the first phase of a colossal project, which we will continue to develop throughout 2019. The next year will see even more exciting landmarks and broken barriers… that’s a lock!
We want to thank all of our players for continuously standing behind us and ensuring that Playground remains one of the World’s Premier Poker Destinations.
From the entire Playground family,
Happy New Year!
