It’s a beautiful Friday morning, and at 12:00pm, the next event in the May Power Weekend will get underway in the Tournament Hall here at Playground Poker Club. Today’s tournament is a $50 + $10 NL Hold’em Rebuy tournament with a $4,000 guaranteed prize pool. Rebuy tournaments are fairly rare in 2018, at least in “normal” tournaments. They’re still very common for satellites – but the bump to the prize pool represented by the unlimited rebuys that are possible during the first 4 levels could be extremely interesting – not to mention the action that the format encourages! Players will start with 15,000 in tournament chips and blind levels are 20 minutes long in this tournament. As mentioned above, unlimited rebuys are available at the player’s seat during the first 4 levels of play. Good luck to everyone playing today! The post Today’s Power Weekend action: $60 Rebuy appeared first […]
Poker
Event #3 Champion: Jonathan Bussieres
Event #3 of the May Power Weekend, the PLO Bounty Re-entry, brought out enough players to easily surpass this tournament’s $10,000 guarantee. In predictable fashion, the players were quick to put their bounty chips in play throughout the early levels, each prepared to take advantage of this event’s unlimited re-entry format if necessary. This type of play comes with the territory for any re-entry bounty tournament, but the surprise was that the players showed no signs of slowing down after the end of the late registration and re-entry period. The field reduced to the final nine, who moved on to the final table, well before anyone expected. The last two men sitting, Marc Chanthamynavong and Jonathan Bussieres, were playing similarly-sized stacks and agreed to a deal that would see them each take $2,400, leaving an extra $406 for the eventual winner. Both players fond a way to survive the crazy […]
Stuart Taylor wins Event #1
The end-game in Event #1 of the May Power Weekend at Playground Poker Club ran very quickly, as the table was reduced from 8 to 2 in just over an hour, and to 1 Champion left standing just minutes after that. And when the last stacks were shipped, Stuart Taylor emerged as the victor. There was no deal between the players as heads up play got underway, and no deal would be made as this segment of the tournament only lasted for around 25 minutes. Michael Hunter started out roughly equal to Stuart as play began, but in short order, Stuart had taken about 40% of Michael’s chips, and when he looked at an he felt it was time to make his shove. Stuart took no time at all to call and flip over his cards: Michael: Stuart: The flop was a pretty definitive answer to the question at hand: […]
The May Power Weekend is underway!
Play in Event #1 is almost through to the first break and with that action underway, the Playground Power Weekend for May 2018 is now on the track! This month, the “Weekend” features 9 events spread from Thursday to Monday evening… well, that means Tuesday morning (early). In keeping with all of the Power Weekends we have thrown, the idea is to present a short series of different, sometimes offbeat tournaments with affordable buy-ins – but to mix that with at least one low-buy-in/high-guarantee event. This time, the “Main” is the 3rd edition of the Playground 200. With a $20 + $20 buy-in, it’s accessible to almost everyone, while the $100,000 guarantee makes it appealing to everyone – even the player used to playing larger stakes events! Today’s tournament is a NL Hold’em 3 Lives Turbo event, while tonight will see the first of three Live flights in the Playground […]
The May Power Weekend is just around the corner!
From May 17th to 21st we’re hosting 9 great tournaments with accessible buy-in levels and some fantastic guarantees. The weekend kicks off on Thursday at Noon with a “3 Lives” tournament, and during the weekend you’ll also have the chance to play in a few rare – but very fun – tournament formats. There are 3 bounty events – two Hold’em and one PLO – plus two rebuy events, and, for poker purists, there’s one of the best tournament formats around – the Shootout. In this format, everyone who moves on to the money has to win their entire table first! All in all, there are a total of $165,000 in guaranteed prize pools over 5 days. The May Power Weekend also includes the 3rd edition of the Playground 200, with its huge $100,000 guarantee! Featuring 3 Live Day 1s, the Playground 200 has become the gold standard in low-buy-in/huge-prizepool […]
Partners in crime!
Kwane and Daniel paid us a visit this morning. Who are Kwane and Daniel? Just a couple of poker players who hit the biggest Bad Beat Jackpot in Playground history! Daniel got here first, then Kwane. Daniel, holding the oversize novelty check in his hands and still looking a little stunned by the experience, noticed him and his face lit up. It was as if Kwane was the familiar face he was looking for to make sense of all the commotion at the cashier. Bad Beat Kwane, who got the biggest amount, looked rather relaxed. He talked of how he was looking forward to bring the news in person to his mom, who lives in Toronto. Him and Daniel casually made plans to go see a Jays game together. Before or after Daniel and his better half visit Iceland, whatever works, right? See the Bad Beat hand here.
2018 MILLIONS North America by the numbers
The 2018 MILLIONS North America has come to a close, and after 12 days of non-stop poker action, it is clear that we’re closing the page on the largest and most successful Poker Festival in Canadian history. The most obvious benchmark for how big was the MILLIONS is the total amount of the prize money that players took home. Once all 6 events were accounted for, an amazing $15,196,020 in prizes were awarded! The Champions Here are a few other interesting facts related to the MILLIONS North America: The Main Event added a million dollars (Canadian) or more to the lifetime earnings of 3 players: Taylor Black, Darryll Fish, and Anthony Ruberto With just 6 events on the schedule, 476 unique players cashed for at least a min-cash in an event Victor Ramdin, who has been visiting Playground on and off for years, was the consistency champ […]
The Omaha BBJ hits again!
The festival may be over, but that doesn’t mean that Jackpots are necessarily going to slow down! For the second time in 2 weeks, the Omaha BBJ has been won – and yet again there are some very happy players who will win a nice bonus from their cash game play! It all went down at about 12:45am on Table 15, which was a $2-$2 PLO table. The action was opened with a couple of limps in seats 2 and 3. Action folded around to the button, who raised to $10 – and both blinds and both limpers made the call. There were 5 players to the flop. Flop: An interesting start to the board… but action was checked all around. Turn: – action was checked around once more. River: – there would be no more checking! The player in Seat 7 was Azizul H, and he opened the action […]
Our MILLIONS Finale champion: Michael Sklenicka
Event 6 was the closing event of the MILLIONS North America 2018, the MILLIONS Finale. The event was designed for high rollers who wanted to redeem themselves from the Main Event, or anyone looking for big-money action. The 126 entries that were accounted for easily surpassed the $1,000,000 guarantee that was attached to the tournament, and made up some very interesting prizes. The Finale brought together the who’s who of the MILLIONS participants. Notables were on every table, and it is no surprise that after 3 days of high-level poker, the final table grouped some of the best tournament players on the poker scene. Philippe D’Auteuil and Josue Sauvageau, two of Québec’s most experienced poker pros, Chance Kornuth, a player with countless wins in his resume, and Manig Loeser, Germany’s finest, to name just a few, faced each other in what can only be described as a grueling marathon. Day […]
Shao is crowned champion
Event 5 was a 2-Day-1 event that featured a $1,100 buy-in and an amazing $1,000,000 guarantee. The MILLIONS Turbo, the official name of the tournament, is a reference to the 30-minute levels that ran through the whole event. Today was Day 2, the final day of the tournament, and 140 qualifiers were assembled in the main hall. A constant race for the lead was noticeable throughout the day. It started with Andrew Neeme, who was 4th biggest stack to start off the day and got eliminated in the early levels when his queens met Griffin Benger’s aces. That’s when Benger started distancing the rest of the field. From that point, he maintained his stack and managed to stay in the top 5 all the way to the end. Shaun Deeb was also a huge player leading up to the final table. In the later stages, he was playing the majority […]
Taylor Black wins the MILLIONS North America Main Event!
After that astonishing check-raise bluff, Taylor had about an 80-20 chip advantage, but Darryll was again showing his class as a player and working hard to narrow the gap. He had taken back a few points when the final hand in the event occurred. Darryll was on the button and raised to 45M holding . Taylor put together a 3bet to 140M holding . Darryll made the call. Flop: . Taylor was first to act, and bet 130M – and found a raise all-in from Darryll Fish. Taylor made the call as quickly as humanly possible… and the bad news was revealed to Darryll. All Taylor would have to do is fade three Queens or two Nines to take the championship! Turn: – a terrible card for Darryll! Now making two pair was no longer good enough – he’s have to hit a Nine for a full house! River: – […]
Three-way action begins… and Ruberto is out!
Three-handed play was still in its infancy when Anthony Ruberto found an unfortunate spot to assert himself. He was on the button when and he opened the action with a raise to 25M holding . Darryll folded, and action was on Taylor Black who held – he wasn’t going anywhere! Taylor chose to make a meaty 3bet to 85M. Anthony – who was enjoying a massage therapy session at the time – re-looked at his cards and threw in the chips to make the call. The pot was now 180M and the dealer put out the flop: . It was pretty much as positive a flop you’d ever expect to see holding – and as first to act, Taylor checked. Anthony considered the situation and made a tiny speculative bet of 25M chips. Taylor’s response was definitive: raise to 135M. The commentators speculated that Anthony had made the small bet […]