Playground has (or will host) a total of 17 Day 1s, all of which feed into this Sunday’s $200 + $20 Grand Prix Canada Day 2. Today’s noon flight, Day 1F, was the 11th Day 1 so far. It has just come to a close.

The average chip stack today is up around 700,000, and some of our players definitely have more than 1,000,000. They are well positioned to move forward.

Below you will see some photos of today’s chip leaders, and exact chip amounts will be available shortly. Congratulations to all those players who survived the day’s 18 levels!

We’ll see you this Sunday at 3:30PM for the next step in the journey.

Just now on table 55 Barry Washburn (seen below in the black “trust” t-shirt) took a final, desperate stab at staying alive late in the tournament. He only had 24,000 to play with, so he shoved.

The next player up (Dominic Theroux in orange) shoved over top with his stack of 159,000, perhaps trying to push out the last player in the hand (Anthony Lamanna in the blue cap). Or perhaps not! Either way, Anthony called and they all flipped their cards.

Anthony:

Dominic:

Barry:

It turned out to be a good thing, because with high pair all Dominic had to worry about was an 8 coming out on the board to help Anthony. It didn’t, and he collected all the chips, moving himself up to 400,000.

Good timing too, as the last 20 minutes ticks away as we speak.

After nine hours of play we are nearing the end of the Day 1F flight.

There are now 49 players left, each with an average stack of 520,000 chips. And while that is a good number to start Day 2 with, some of our former Day 1 finalists have racked up as much as 3,000,000 in their first day, meaning that perhaps the players here should keep grinding just a little longer.

This is not the strategy they appear to be following over at table 56, one of only 5 tables left from our starting group of 255 players. In the last three hands we witnessed, the table simply shipped the blinds to the first player to make a bet.

That kind of play may minimize the risk, but it won’t open up any big possibilities.

Then again, the chatter at the table seems to indicate they’re all experienced players, so maybe they’re all just biding their time, and looking to move in for a kill only when it’s appropriate.

As we move steadily towards the end of the Day 1F flight, our number of participants is steadily dropping. Right now the field has been reduced to 74. Well, actually 73.

On table 56 just now we noticed Ricardo Cavallieri standing up, all in.

He was facing off against Jonathan Provencher, and Jonathan had some good cards (KK). However, unfortunately for him Ricardo was holding pocket Aces.

The board was no help. Because Jonathan’s stack was easily covered by Ricardo, he grabbed his jacket and took a walk.

Poker play continues!

The third break of the day is over and level 13 has just begun. While the players were away, and with the chip stack average sitting at around 300,000, we were on the lookout for anyone over 600,000 to populate our leaderboard.

Surprisingly, there were not that many players to reach the milestone yet. The entire field had only a handful of players with more than half a million chips. Up top is Benedetto Angeloni, with 636,000.

A few players are nipping at his heels, however. They are listed below.

First Name | Prénom	Name | Nom	Stack | Tapis
Benedetto	Angeloni	636,000
Martin	Gaudreault-Remilla	591,500
Mitchell	Besharah	586,000
Victor	Beaudoin	552,000

Janisleidy Hernandez Alfonso just eliminated Michel Leblond with one of those classic boards in which the kicker was the difference.

The hand began with two players limping in from mid-position, which prompted Michel to shove for his remaining 83,000 chips. Janisleidy’s call made it an easy fold for the limpers, and the heads up battle didn’t last long.

Board:

When the players flipped their cards Michel’s suited couldn’t compete with Janisleidy’s suited . We are now down to 85 remaining, and the players are now on break.

As she had been doing for the last few hands, Elvira Popescu raised in late position to just over 10,000. Usually she simply collected the blinds, but this time she was called by the next player at the table, Ara Asatoorian, leaving her out of position if the blinds folded.

The blinds didn’t fold, however, and the four of them saw the flop.

Flop:

The table checked around to Ara, who bet 15,000. This was enough to push out the blinds, but not Elvira. Now it was just the two of them. The turn was a .

Now that there were three diamonds on the board Elvira bet the turn, putting in a healthy 20,000. Ara called nonchalantly, and a came down on the river.

With four diamonds sparkling on the board, this time Elvira was more cautious, checking over to Ara.

This time he bet 54,000, and the fact that he had flatted the flop and bet both the turn and river didn’t seem to bother Elvira. She called. Perhaps she shouldn’t have.

Ara flipped over his nut flush , and Elvira mucked. Was she holding a in her hand? We will never know, as a couple of hands later she busted out.

That ‘s the way the game works – and losing 100,000 on a hand will typically help speed that process along.