Event 20: $1,000 + $100 Playground1000

The Playground1000 was the 20th event in the World Cup of Cards, and a total of 867 entries took place for this tournament which boasted a $1,000,000 guarantee. Starting flights were available online at partypoker and live at Playground Poker Club, with all qualifiers reunited on Monday evening for Day 2. The top 100 players secured themselves a payout, with a staggering $200,000 top prize set aside for the eventual winner.

Once Day 3 was complete, 24 players were still in the race and they returned to the felts for Day 4 to play down to a winner. As play neared the final table, it was Donghai Lu who was leading the way with a considerable chip lead. Alexander Puchalski (9th – $10,000) and Aaron Czaja (8th – $15,000) were eliminated in the first few orbits of the final table, and shortly after Jason Mandanici-Turcot stormed up the leaderboard by eliminating Carlos Gerones (7th – $22,500).

Marc Guerbilsky (6th – $30,000) was the next casualty after an unfortunate cooler saw his chips shift over to Charles La Boissonnière, losing with versus . Charles went on a heater after that hand, eliminating partypoker pro Natalia Breviglieri (5th – $40,000) in 5th place, and then taking out Donghai Lu (4th – $54,500) in a two-part process.

During 3-handed action, big-stacked Charles was putting pressure on his opponents with an aggressive style of play, and managed to eliminated Jason (3rd – $80,000) in a battle of the blinds to bring the event into heads-up play. He began the duel with a 7-to-1 chip lead over heads-up opponent Garrett Dansereau, and within a few minutes the final hand took place.

With around 15 big blinds in front of him, roughly 10% of the chips in play, Garrett open-shoved from the small blind and found a call. He tabled and was trailing the of Charles, who went on to win the hand with a runout. With it, Charles was crowned our Playground1000 champion, taking home a the $200,000 top prize, along with a WCC Champion’s Trophy and a set of Monster headphones!