Since the bubble burst the eliminations have come quickly and the tournament is now down to 100 players with over 4 levels left to play today.
Mike Leah was one of the more recent eliminations as flopping Kx Kx 7x doesn’t help K6 nearly as much as you would think when your opponent has 7x 7x for a flopped boat.
Play will continue today for 11 levels total, which is to say that it will conclude at the end of play in level 24.
Event 6 in the Playground Poker Spring Classic was the $1000 + $100 partypoker WPT Canadian Spring Championship, a next-day re-entry event with three starting flights that had a total of 1079 entries over all three flights. This generated a total prize pool of $1,046,630.00 which was awarded according to the following payout table.
| Rank | First Name | Last Name | Prize |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Jason | Comtois | $178,114.00 |
| 2 | John Paul | Tabago | $124,758.00 |
| 3 | Daniel | Gagne | $80,904.00 |
| 4 | Johnny | Mazzaferro | $59,762.00 |
| 5 | Alexander | Wong | $44,586.00 |
| 6 | Mario | Lim | $36,108.00 |
| 7 | Pierre | Guenette | $29,933.00 |
| 8 | Sylvain | Siebert | $23,863.00 |
| 9 | Brent | Wheeler | $17,792.00 |
| 10 | Marco | Caza | $13,292.00 |
| 11 | Rodney | Lawrence | $13,292.00 |
| 12 | Ami | Alibay | $13,292.00 |
| 13 | Matthew | Brunskole | $10,675.00 |
| 14 | Frederic | Bunchan | $10,675.00 |
| 15 | Simon | Quintal | $10,675.00 |
| 16 | Maxime | Theroux | $9,210.00 |
| 17 | Nicholas | Petrina | $9,210.00 |
| 18 | James | Nortcliff | $9,210.00 |
| 19 | Osman | Soubra | $8,268.00 |
| 20 | Eric | Afriat | $8,268.00 |
| 21 | Alexandre | Lavigne | $8,268.00 |
| 22 | David | Lanthier | $7,326.00 |
| 23 | Mark | Guerbilsky | $7,326.00 |
| 24 | Ruben | Perceval | $7,326.00 |
| 25 | Daniel | Cote | $6,384.00 |
| 26 | Samuel | Chartier | $6,384.00 |
| 27 | Kenneth | McFarlane | $6,384.00 |
| 28 | Gaetano | Buda | $5,442.00 |
| 29 | Mathieu | Roy Arbour | $5,442.00 |
| 30 | Eric | Davis | $5,442.00 |
| 31 | Xiao | Peng | $5,442.00 |
| 32 | Sammy | Chao | $5,442.00 |
| 33 | Andrew | Humphrey | $5,442.00 |
| 34 | Tyson | Erback | $5,442.00 |
| 35 | Selajtin | Jakupovski | $5,442.00 |
| 36 | Danny | Ayoub | $5,442.00 |
| 37 | Jonathan | Poissant | $4,709.00 |
| 38 | Justin | Miller | $4,709.00 |
| 39 | Edouard | Dupuis | $4,709.00 |
| 40 | Ashutosh | Sharma | $4,709.00 |
| 41 | Ben | Menache | $4,709.00 |
| 42 | Wei | Xu | $4,709.00 |
| 43 | Thomas | Mulverhill | $4,709.00 |
| 44 | Georges Anthony | Dunst | $4,709.00 |
| 45 | Daniel | Schreiber | $4,709.00 |
| 46 | William | Foxen | $3,977.00 |
| 47 | Tony | DiMaria | $3,977.00 |
| 48 | Maxime | Laberge | $3,977.00 |
| 49 | Brady | Hinnegan | $3,977.00 |
| 50 | Yong | Li | $3,977.00 |
| 51 | David | Baba | $3,977.00 |
| 52 | Conrado | Corpus | $3,977.00 |
| 53 | Josh | Kimmel | $3,977.00 |
| 54 | Ronald | Greig | $3,977.00 |
| 55 | Giovanni | Abate | $3,349.00 |
| 56 | Paul | Naccarato | $3,349.00 |
| 57 | Johnny A | Benehoutsos | $3,349.00 |
| 58 | George | Daoukakis | $3,349.00 |
| 59 | Casey | Smith | $3,349.00 |
| 60 | Jordan | Martin | $3,349.00 |
| 61 | Steven | Schartner | $3,349.00 |
| 62 | Jean-Philippe | Matte | $3,349.00 |
| 63 | Olivier | Racine | $3,349.00 |
| 64 | Doris | Charlebois | $2,930.00 |
| 65 | Ryan | Higgins | $2,930.00 |
| 66 | William R | Mullen | $2,930.00 |
| 67 | Albert | Phillips | $2,930.00 |
| 68 | Steven | Chu | $2,930.00 |
| 69 | Jonathan | Renaud | $2,930.00 |
| 70 | Irina | Tchakarova | $2,930.00 |
| 71 | Diana | Shamshoum | $2,930.00 |
| 72 | Timothy | Vukson | $2,930.00 |
| 73 | Marc-Andre | Racine | $2,511.00 |
| 74 | Mike | Sexton | $2,511.00 |
| 75 | Amirmasoud | Babakhani | $2,511.00 |
| 76 | Frederic | Moulin | $2,511.00 |
| 77 | Camille | Godin | $2,511.00 |
| 78 | Owen | Snow | $2,511.00 |
| 79 | Jean-guy | Boyer | $2,511.00 |
| 80 | Shpend | Kllokoqi | $2,511.00 |
| 81 | Ricky | Tang | $2,511.00 |
| 82 | Michael David | Yeomans | $2,197.00 |
| 83 | Nicky | Evans | $2,197.00 |
| 84 | Mathieu | Martin | $2,197.00 |
| 85 | Yan | Touchette | $2,197.00 |
| 86 | Johnathan Neil | Hansmeyer | $2,197.00 |
| 87 | John | Henhoeffer | $2,197.00 |
| 88 | Kevin | MacDonald | $2,197.00 |
| 89 | Eric | Levesque | $2,197.00 |
| 90 | Dean | Murphy | $2,197.00 |
| 91 | Marcello | Simonetti | $1,883.00 |
| 92 | Thibaut | Delmarle | $1,883.00 |
| 93 | Charles | Gagnon | $1,883.00 |
| 94 | Vince | Dwyer | $1,883.00 |
| 95 | Peter | Kavouras | $1,883.00 |
| 96 | Paul | Petten | $1,883.00 |
| 97 | Joseph | Verdugo | $1,883.00 |
| 98 | Geoffrey Robert | McNeely | $1,883.00 |
| 99 | Josue | Sauvageau | $1,883.00 |
| 100 | Jean-Philippe | Piquette | $1,569.00 |
| 101 | Scott Robert | Cagan | $1,569.00 |
| 102 | Rayan | Chamas | $1,569.00 |
| 103 | Boyd | O'Neill | $1,569.00 |
| 104 | Mike | Leah | $1,569.00 |
| 105 | Pascal | Bibeau | $1,569.00 |
| 106 | Shawn | Zibenberg | $1,569.00 |
| 107 | Gary | Lucci | $1,569.00 |
| 108 | Serge | St-Pierre | $1,569.00 |
| 109 | Charles | Dalton Shapiro | $1,569.00 |
| 110 | Matthew | Durand | $1,569.00 |
| 111 | Domenic | Durante | $1,569.00 |
| 112 | Frederick | Deguzman | $1,569.00 |
| 113 | Bill | Loukanikas | $1,569.00 |
| 114 | Louis Alexandre | Cabana | $1,569.00 |
| 115 | Anthony | O'Hagan | $1,569.00 |
| 116 | Steve | Simpson | $1,569.00 |
| 117 | Chris | Arvanitis | $1,569.00 |
| 118 | Manuel | Moffatt | $1,569.00 |
| 119 | David | Szymanowicz | $1,569.00 |
| 120 | Chase | Olsen | $1,569.00 |
| 121 | Andrew | Helleur | $1,569.00 |
| 122 | Eric | Theroux | $1,569.00 |
| 123 | Frederic | Mercier | $1,569.00 |
| 124 | Badri | Abboud | $1,569.00 |
| 125 | Dale | Chalifoux | $1,569.00 |
| 126 | Chaayanath | Mysore | $1,569.00 |
The Main Event of the WPT Canadian Spring Championship is on break, and play will resume momentarily in level 20. Stacks are continuing to grow, and although no one has breached the 1 million chip mark yet, we expect this to happen fairly soon. Here is an estimate of the top 5 stacks at the break:
The bubble is always a big turning point in a tournament, and players often have quite a bi-polar method of playing at this stage. One portion of the players will tighten their game up to try and make it into the money, while another takes advantage of these ‘scared’ players and use this opportunity to chip their stacks up by bullying their table. This results in a growing gap between the leaders and the short stacks, as many players see their stacks dwindle down to just a few big blinds leading up to the money. It also means that when the bubble finally bursts, the field is full of players ready to get their chips in with any two marginal cards, leading to a spree of eliminations.
Here at Playground Poker, the dealer no longer announces ‘Seat Open’ when someone has been eliminated, as this has been replaced by a light system. LED lights have been attached to the back of the dealer chairs, and when a player is eliminated, the floor is called over via a green indicator light (the red is for emergency, and the yellow is to call over the cocktail waitress). Now that the bubble has burst, we’ve been seeing green lights go off at all corners of the room, as the field has dropped by 11 players in the 15 minutes between the money bubble and the current break.
Another player has been eliminated on the same hand that player number 128 busted. Play paused on each table as the hand was completed as tables waited to kick off hand-for-hand play, but on the last table still going, Stephanie Goertz was eliminated putting the rest of the players in the money. For the record, the other player eliminated on the hand was Leng Khauv.
Since this hand 6 players have already been eliminated and gone to the tournament desk to receive their payment coupon.
Martin Roy, the Tournament Director at Playground, has just announced that dealers should light their red lamps at the end of this hand as play will begin hand-for-hand with 127 players remaining.
We just saw Ruben Perceval pick up a big pot with a tricky play. Early position opened to 16K, and Reuben flat called from the cut-off. The button then announced he was all-in for his remaining 70K, and the original raiser isolated for roughly 240K. Ruben snap called and turned over AA, which held versus the short stack’s 66 and the original raiser’s KQ off-suit. He now stands at almost 600K, which should put him amongst the chipleaders.
At the last break just over one level ago, there was one player over 500K in chips and 2 or 3 within 40K of that watershed count – but in just one level we now find at least 6 other players have joined Josh Kimmel over 500K and with the bubble starting to get closer there will definitely be lots of opportunity for other healthy stacks to chip up in the next little while.
Some of the players over the 500K mark now are Amir Babakhani, Eric Afriat, William R Mullen, and Sammy Chao.
Ironically, Josh had to win a big hand to get back over the 500K mark after having lost a couple of pots recently. We arrived on the river and André Turcotte in Seat 1 had bet 30K on a board that read 
and Josh raised to 75K. André thought for a few minutes but then made a frustrated fold.
We’ve seen a few players be quite active on their Twitter accounts in Day 2. Here are a few messages we’ve come across:
AK<AJ did not go as planned. Out of the @WPT Canadian Spring Championship. @888poker pic.twitter.com/ZwszPR4izp
— Xuan Liu (@xxl23) March 30, 2014
Got a full double with set over set, then hit trips on top pair: 380k going into 2.5k-5k blinds.
— Tony Dunst (@Bond_18) March 30, 2014
Still distinctly average #wptmontreal #averageupdates #partypoker @BJNemeth
— Kara Scott (@KaraOTR) March 30, 2014
Pre-tournament Tweets:
Day 2 @PLAYGROUNDPOKER about to start. I have just below aver at 90k (amount I had after 1st hr yesterday). Need another ‘Carl Lewis’ start.
— Mike Sexton (@MikeSexton_WPT) March 30, 2014
Winds almost blew me off the road heading to play Day 2 today, but they’ll have to try harder than that. Happy Sunday everybody! @888poker
— Xuan Liu (@xxl23) March 30, 2014
Playing day 2 of #wptmontreal today for @partypoker. I have just over average chips & a dream. Let’s go Canada!
— Kara Scott (@KaraOTR) March 30, 2014
We’ve played three levels so far in day two, and with only 200 remaining, some players are starting to build empires with their chips.
Here is a look at the current chip leaders going into level 17:
