Playground Winter Festival: The $250 Frenzy Moves on to Day 2
The final two qualifying flights of Event #3: The $250 Frenzy concluded on Sunday at Playground Poker Club and the field is now set heading into Day 2. The total entries received through the six qualifying sessions tallied up to 1,052, cruising past the $200,000 guarantee and closing off at $229,599.
With a total of 224 runners returning for Day 2, just the top 108 spots will make the money with a min-cash of $500. Making the final table will lock up at least $3,450 but, the prize every player remaining will be focusing on is the $43,000 sitting on top.
The penultimate flight got underway Sunday morning attracting 184 hopefuls. Just 37 had the ingredients to make it through the 14 levels of play. Making the most of his 20,000 starting stack was Jordan Saccucci.
Saccucci was not able to catch the top overall stacks but his end-of-day accumulation of 240,000 seats him just outside of the top five. Not too far behind Saccucci was Vincent Deschatelets with 210,000. Rounding out the top stacks on Day 1e were Jay Srinivasan (188,000), Endrit Geci (161,000) and Marco Sousa (157,000).
As expected, Day 1f attracted the largest field of the event, closing out with 213 entries. There were 56 players left to bag and tag at night’s end, all securing their last chance to qualify for Day 2.
Interestingly enough, even with more chips in play, the Day 1f chip leader, Donghai Lu had less than half of what overall leader Randy Khalil from Day 1b was able to muster. Lu finished with 171,500.
The battle for the top spot was tight on Sunday evening with lots of players within a few chips of the lead. Stephen Nahm finished in second with 165,000, while David Bolduc Hamel (162,000),Langis Degrandpre (157,500), Noy U (154,500) and Tomislav Pavkovic (152,500) were all able to build healthy stacks.
Joey ‘Birdman’ Boczek will start Day 2 with the shortest stack after a cruel river left him with just 1,000. Boczek got into a preflop raising war with Langis Degrandpre that ended up with both players all in. Boczek had the best of it with ace-ten against Degranpre’s queen-jack. Unfortunately, a queen fell on the river and the 157,500 pot was pushed away from Birdman.
Day 2 will kick off at 7 p.m. on Monday evening with another 12 levels on the schedule.
Also on the docket for Monday is the fourth event of the festival. Event #4: $110 NL Hold’em Deepstack Turbo gets underway at noon local time with a guarantee of $7,500. Players will start with 25,000 in chips, 15-minute blind levels and late registration open until the end of the break following Level 5.
The Playground Winter Festival runs through Feb. 15 and PokerNews will bring you daily updates of all the happenings throughout the festival. For full coverage and details check out the Playground event blog here.
