Playground Winter Festival: Simon Pin-Disle Bags Day 1D Lead of the Wild $150
The field is set and the hunt is on after Day 1D of Event #1: The Wild $150 ended at the Playground Winter Festival 2017. As expected, the final qualifying flight of the event drew the largest attendance, peaking at 340 entries. Already surpassing the $100,000 guarantee after Day 1C, the total entries climbed to 1,197, closing the prize pool at $156,747.
At the end of 14 levels, 66 players were able to secure their seat on Day 2. Hunting for the overall chip lead, Simon Pin-Disle fell just short of Imran Hussain��s Day 1A mark of 312,500, ending Day 1D with 311,500. Pin-Disle is no stranger to these structures. In April of 2016, Pin-Disle finished second in a $250 Frenzy for $37,000. In fact, that was his last live-recorded tournament cash according to his Hendon Mob page.
Also building top stacks in the final session were Abraham Jungreis (297,000), Christopher Loye (240,500), Guy Lebrun (226,000) and Robert Muzzatti (197,000).
A few notables to survive the day and book a seat on Day 2 include Nimer Ltaif (196,500), World Series of Poker bracelet winner Michael Malm (130,500) and 2016 World Poker Tour (WPT) Canadian Spring Championship runner-up Ruben Perceval (118,000).
Malm has enjoyed lots of success at Playground recently and even picked up a decent score in the Bahamas a few weeks ago, capturing a $440 side event for $18,404. In the last two festivals at Playground, Malm has four cashes for more than $16,000. Perceval is coming off a win as well. Back in November, he took down the $1,200 Espace Jeux Classic for $26,393. Along with his second place run in 2016 at the WPT, Perceval has 15 total recorded cashes at Playground.
Day 2 will kick off at 7 p.m. on Wednesday evening with 240 players remaining. Just 117 of them will make the money but all eyes will be on the $28,000 first-place prize.
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.
