Playground Winter Festival: The $250 Frenzy Kicks Off
Another busy day at Playground Poker Club saw the first two flights of Event #3: The $250 Frenzy get underway. One of the highlight events of the Playground Winter Festival 2017, The Frenzy features a guarantee of $200,000 and six Day 1 qualifying flights.
Day 1a began at 10 a.m. on Friday morning, attracting a field of 111 entries. After 14 levels of play, just 22 were left with a seat and chips to bag. Tossing the largest stack into a bag was Martin McManus with 200,000. McManus surged during the later parts of the day and one time held a commanding lead.
Albert N closed the gap towards the end of play, bagging a healthy stack of 183,500. Maxime Boulais (172,000), Isaac Buswell (169,000) and Tam Ho (144,500) rounded out the top five stacks. A couple of Playground crushers also found some success on Day 1a. Final table regulars William Blais and Glen Hammers survived with 100,000 and 85,000 respectively.
Friday evening saw a new flock of hopefuls enter the poker room looking to book their seat for Day 2. Day 1b action got underway at 6 p.m. and received a total of 169 runners. When the dust cleared, there were 35 players left, two of which were able to build monster stacks.
Ending the night with almost two times the chips as his Day 1a counterparts and more than double that of the rest of the Day 1b field, Randy Khalil mustered a stack of 368,500 and not close behind was Lucien Mariuta with 349,500. Considering the two players started with just 20,000 between the two of them, by the end of 14 levels they had accumulated almost 25 percent of the chips in play.
Far below the leaders but still sitting near the top of the leaderboard was Alberto Scuderi (155,000), Event #1 finalist Daniel Le (139,000) and Jaered Daniel Besse (135,000). World Series of Poker bracelet winner Michael Malm also built a decent stack, bagging 109,000.
Anyone not finding any luck on Friday has another two shots to fire on Saturday. Day 1c kicks off at 10 a.m. with Day 1d set for 6 p.m. Late registration remains open for each until the end of the break following Level 4. Can’t make it Saturday? Never fear, the final two flights follow on Sunday.
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.
