Today’s $500 + $50 Freezeout Event started at 11:00am this morning, and after 15 hours of play and 149 eliminations, Samuel Roussy-Majeau was left alone on the final table, with all the chips and the Champion’s Trophy!

The Event, being the first of a series of higher buy-in Events, attracted a number of high profile players. All these players wanted to warm up and boost their bankroll for the upcoming series of big Events. Among the temporary leaders, we had Jean-François Bouchard, Bradley Copestake and Isabelle Tremblay.

When the final table formed, Samuel Roussy-Majeau had the most chips, sitting on a very comfortable 800K stack. He knocked out many finalists, and as a result, stayed in the driver seat the whole way. That was until the 3-way waltz started. They played for almost 2 hours, exchanging the lead many times, and more importantly, having fun the whole way. The mood was light, but the action was rough.

Daune Fernandez then found himself on the wrong end of a true cooler, as his top 2 pairs fell to Roussy-Majeau’s flopped straight. He kept fighting for a while, but eventually lost all his chips with , a hand that looked really good until Majeau tabled . The board was not enough to pull the upset, although the turn had brought a flush draw for Fernandez.

The very next hand was the last of the Event. Our players were all-in pre-flop, and although Roussy-Majeau was a slight underdog, he managed to hit a jack on the turn for the win (see full hand below).

Congratulations to Daune Fernandez and Matthew Wilkins for a putting up a great fight, and Samuel Roussy-Majeau for taking down the $500 + $50 Freeze Event and earning himself a cool $17,100!

The $550 Freeze Champion: Samuel Roussy-Majeau – $17,100 and the Champion’s Trophy

Runner-up: Matthew Wilkins – $12,900

3rd place: Daune Fernandez – $9,800

Last hand of play:

The trio have now been playing 3-way for about an hour. Samuel Roussy-Majeau doubled Daune Fernandez, and that put everybody pretty much at par. Since then, it has been a grueling inch-by-inch game, all of them pulling equally hard.

This went on for a while until Roussy-Majeau caught a big break. His found a monster flop, and Daune Fernandez had flopped pretty big himself with  . The board was .

That put Majeau well in the lead, with over 2 million chips. Fernandez doubled up a few times since then, and has now a fighting chance for the bigger prizes.

Stay tuned!

Majeau, contrary to his habitual small raise, open-shoved from the button, and found a call from Matthew Wilkins in the small blind. Fernandez got out of the way, and the cards were tabled:

Matthew Wilkins:
Samuel Roussy-Majeau:

Board:

Wilkins has doubled his 1-million-chip stack, and is now comfortably in the driver seat, while Majeau and Fernandez have 1.1M and 500K respectively.