They loved Event #1 Champ Jerry Calvaneso at his table when he fell down to 7,000 in chips right off the bat.
"They hate me now," he said, having built his stack back up to double what he started with.
Calvaneso used his unique skills and a lot of luck to get there, flopping top pair against a straight, but managing to make a flush on the river to win the biggest pot he's played all day and begin to make a run at his second title of the series.
Buffalonian Sharman Olshan got off to a quick start in Event #1 but simply fizzled out as the day wore on.
Today, she's hoping for a deeper run and has found a way to more than double her starting stack giving her a place among the early leaders.
All she had to do was flop a set of threes, call when fellow Buffalonian Sathish Naior shoved with the nut flush draw and fade a diamond with two cards to come.
While things started slow with just 30 players registering for this second event on the 2015 Western New York Poker Challenge schedule, that number has more than tripled.
Although players in the event can re-enter if they bust out until the end of the eighth level, the tournament is now closed to new registrants with the board reading 96 entries.
The temperature outside might be below freezing, but the poker action will be hotter than ever! Running from February 27 to March 10, 2015, Playground Poker Club is hosting the first Playground Winter Festival.
The festival kicks off with "The Wild $150," a reentry event with four starting flights and a $100,000 guarantee. It continues with 14 other events including a $330 two-day Freeze, a mixed hold��em/Omaha event, and a $220 Survivor tourney.
The $1,100 Main Event will begin on Friday, March 6 and feature two Day 1s (next-day reentry), and it has a massive $500,000 guaranteed prize pool!