Here at Day 1D of the Playground 100, we’ve seen over 160 entries so far (including 24 re-entries), and the players have now just gone on break. After a quick tour of the tables, an early leader has emerged: Simon Belair-Grondin. In fact, Simon is the only player to have accumulated more than double the chip average of 27,068 chips. You heard that correctly: not a single player has more than 50,000 chips, other than Simon.

This kind of chip spread is very unusual, and we doubt that this configuration will last very long. While it may indicate that the poker talent at this tournament is spread relatively evenly, what it definitely shows is that any player has a chance to rocket their way up the leaderboard to join (or even dethrone) Simon in the near future.

Simon’s 80,000 chips will serve him well now that late registration is about to close. With the end of unlimited rebuys, the action will undoubtedly tighten up as the group is slowly reduced to its final size of 10% of the total number of entries. Our remaining players will battle it out over the course of the afternoon, all of them hoping to become one of the day’s final 17 players. Each of those 17 players will be “in the money,” and will gain a guaranteed spot in the Playground 100’s Day 2.

Day 2 is the final day of the tournament and will kick off tomorrow, Sunday, November 23 at 3:00PM.

Until then, good luck to all of our remaining players!