With Day 1b nearing it’s end, these four players are leading the field:

1. Pascal Bibeau – 325K
2. Joseph Verdugo – 287K
3. Justin Miller – 225K
4. Harley Stoffmaker – 210K

Below is an album of some photographs from level 10:

Justin Miller has eliminated Eleuterio De Miranda Guedes, taking his last 52K in chips and growing his own stack to over 250K in the process. The chips went in preflop after Eleuterio shoved over Justin’s early position raise. Justin tanked for a few seconds and confirmed the amount before calling and turning over .

After he’d been called Eleuterio just said, “good call” and turned over . The community cards didn’t offer any assistance – .

Justin is now among the chip leaders of Day 1b going into the final 2 levels.

For the past few levels we’ve seen a few players build up some dominating stacks, but nothing like Joseph Verdugo has done since the last break. In just a level and a half he has gone from an already-leading 185K all the way to 325K as he looks to set himself up smartly for Day 2. There’s still long way to go today, however…

The players are on their third break of the day and we took the opportunity to count the large stacks in the tournament as well as note the chip counts for some of the other notable players in the field.

Chip leaders

• Joseph Verdugo – 185K
• David Szymanowicz – 177K
• Harley Stoffmaker – 172K
• Josh Kimmel, Michael Neuber, Michael Mallette, Ami Alibay – 130K

Some other notable players…

Gavin Smith and Antonio Esfandiari both busted during the last level or two, but there are still some other notable players in the field.

• Kara Scott – 65K
• Marc-Etienne McLaughlin – 13K
• Philippe Plouffe – 62K
• Mike Leah – 61K
• Laurence Grondin – 32K
• Jeff Gross – 40K

When we got to the table Gavin Smith showed off his small stack with the disclaimer that he had just run Kings into Aces… and then he got his last few thousand into the middle and was called by Dean Murphy, who showed . Gavin was holding .

The board ran out which didn’t give him the lift he needed and Gavin is out of Day 1b.

Late registration for Day 1b has closed and the final number of entries for today is 308, which is up a significant amount from the 219 total entries yesterday for Day 1b. That adds up to 527 total entries which means that there’s a chance that the event will have an overlay to the prize pool!

Of course this is great for players – an overlay amounts to free money, and definitely adds value to the tournament as a whole.

Needless to say, we’ll be keeping a close eye on registration numbers tomorrow!

We are back from the second break here in Day 1b of the WPT Canadian Spring Championship Main Event, and although many players have already doubled and tripled their starting stacks, only 3 players have breached the 100K mark, with Harley Stoffmaker well ahead of the field.

Here is an estimate of the top 5 chip stacks:

1. Harley Stoffmaker – 170K
2. Josh Kimmel – 123K
3. Ami Alibay – 107K
4. Fuad Nasser – 94K
5. Paul Basi – 90k

Josh Kimmel

Ami Alibay

Fuad Nasser

Paul Basi

Harley Stoffmaker

We’ve noticed a few players in today’s Day 1b field that have had success in some of the previous series here at Playground Poker Club. Here is an album of some of these players, along with their biggest past finishes:

Michael Malm

Placed 1st in Event 4 ($550 buy-in) in the 2014 Playground Poker Spring Classic ($20K)

Kyle Zechner

Placed 4th in the $1.1K Event in the 2013 Playground Poker Spring Classic 2013 ($29K)

Setrak Suloukji

Placed 1st in the High Roller ($5.5K buy-in) in the 2013 Playground Poker Spring Classic ($83K)

Michael Neuber

Placed 3rd in the $1.1K Event in the 2013 Playground Poker Fall Classic ($30K)

Johnny Mazzaferro

Placed 1st in a $1.1K Event in the 2013 Playground Poker Spring Classic ($44K).

Bill Kontaratos

Placed 5th in the $1.1K Main Event in the FTP Montreal Festival ($74K).

Vlad Faubert

Placed 6th in a $1.1K Event in the 2013 Playground Poker Fall Classic ($18K)

Geoffrey Robert McNeely

Placed 2nd in a $1.1K Event in the 2013 Playground Poker Spring Classic ($25K)

Jeff Gross

Placed 3rd in the $3.3K 2012 WPT Montreal ($317K). In addition he was 2nd overall in the partypoker Premier League VII ($274K).

After 3 levels of play, the field is led by Fuad Nasser who is holding just over 90k. Not far behind are Ivan Mamuzic (76K), Michael Neuber (75K), Jonathan Cohen (73K) and Calogero Graci (70K). A number of players are also in the 60K-70K range, such Tyler Thomas (68K), Steve Kidman (67K), Yassin Choukri (67K), Paul Basi (66K), Karl Gingras (64K), amongst others.

Two levels have come and go here in this second Day 1 of the WPT Canadian Spring Championship Main Event, and attendance has climbed up to 269 entries.

Here are a few photos of players participating in Day 1b: