Once players were in the money, we saw a lot more movement with the chips, which resulted in a string of quick eliminations.

Gavin Smith and Ravi Raghavan were amongst the first to be eliminated, collecting a minimum cash each. Jean Philippe Piquette picked up another cash, giving him three total in the Fall Classic, as he also finished shortly after the bubble burst. WPT Champion and legendary poker pro Shawn Buchanan was eliminated not too long after.

Antonio Esfandiari decided to try a magic trick with and 4-bet shoved a nearly average stack preflop. Unfortunately for him, Darren Elias made the call with and flopped quads, eliminating Antonio, who increased his total earning by 0,027%.

Meanwhile, other players were building empires with their recently acquired chips. The day ended with five players sitting above the million chip mark, and the chipleader is poker pro Ludovic Lacay, who picked up a massive pot near the end when he called off a bluff versus Byron Kaverman.  Ludovic came close to winning a WPT title back in October 2007, when he finished runner up to Markus Lehmann in the WPT Spanish Championship Barcelona Main Event, so he is surely determined to go for the win and bring that WPT Montreal Main Event Belt back to his home in France. Since then, Ludovic has won a major title, placing first in the EPT San Remo Main Event 2012.

Seasoned poker pro Jonathan Little cruised his way into the money comfortably, and he remained relatively quiet until the last few hands of the night, where he shot up the leaderboard with a few big pots. He ended up bagging just over 1 million chips, which doubles the average stack. Right behind him in stacks in 2-time WPT Champion Guillaume Darcourt, past WPT Montreal Champion Amir Babakhani, and a little further back is Yann Dion, a fierce player from Quebec who is making a big name for himself with his recent performances, such as a final table at this year’s PCA Main Event, and a deep run in the WSOP Main Event this summer.

Sitting around the average mark is online phenomenon Griffin Benger, or Flush_Entity, who is making a successful transition from the virtual table to the live felt. Earlier this year he won his first major title, finishing first in the € 10,000 EPT High Roller Berlin.

EPT Champion Kevin MacPhee is still in contention holding 31 big blinds, although he lost a considerable amount of his stack near the end of the Day 2. However this experienced tournament player has the ability to work with any stack and run it up to go for the win.

Victor Ramdin, Mohsim Charania and Lily Kiletto also made it through the day, but are coming back as some of the shorter stacks tomorrow. George Caragiorgas and Carter Swidler bagged and tagged their stacks as well, and are both a little below the average, but still deep given the structure.

In the end 59 players were left with chips and a seat at the end of Day 2, and tomorrow the day is scheduled to end when the field falls to the final 27.

You can find the chip counts and seating arrangements here for Day 3, which resumes Tuesday at 12pm.

We’ll see you then!

We have just reached the money here at the PartyPoker WPT Montreal Main Event, and the 99 players that remain are now guaranteed a minimum cash of $5,531! But for the most of these players, this was just another step they had to pass on the way to their ultimate goal, the WPT title, which comes with a whopping $517,049 prize, a seat to the WPT World Championship, worth $15,400, and the WPT Montreal Champions belt!

Playground Poker Players Club member Valerie Ross was just two spots away from making the money, as she pushed in her last 10 big blinds in with , and was called by Patrick St-Onge from the big blind, who was holding and a more than healthy stack. The board ran out , and although Valerie was happy to see the king fall on the turn, she gave out a little sigh when the river gave Patrick the flush, but she walked off with a smile, and congratulated her tablemates.

Just as the tournament director announced that hand-for-hand play would start, there was another all-in at a different table which resulted in the bubble bursting. Unfortunately it was local hero Sebastien Drolet-Poitras, the tournament chip leader at the start of the day, who came out short in the hand and finished in 100th place.

Congratulations to our 99 in-the-money players!

One of the chip leaders for much of the day has been eliminated just 5 spots from the money.

Vincent Jacques, a WSOP bracelet runner-up in 2010 and widely considered to be among the top up-and-coming Quebec players min-raised from the button, and Darren Rabinowitz to his left went all in for about 300K. Action came back to Vincent and he went deep in the tank. After a while, he took a chip to throw to make the call between his fingers and… tanked some more. Finally he threw the chip, made the call, and Darren turned over – which was dominated by Vincent’s .

The flop was not kind to Vincent, however: . The turn and river were no help to Vincent and he was eliminated in 105th place.

Of the 862 entries in the WPT Montreal the top 99 will get paid, and so with 106 players remaining the bubble is looming very closely on the horizon. The action has been quick today, but things have tightened up considerably since the dinner break.

Recent eliminations include Players Club member Anne Marie Angelil, Jeff Coté, Will Failla, Greg Ostrander, Martin Jacobson, and Xuan Liu.

Here are some photos taken just before the dinner break:

There are still a number of well-known players in the field, both locally and internationally. Here’s how they are stacked at the dinner break:

Table 49:

• Sebastien Drolet-Poitras – 335K

Table 50:

• Anne Marie Angelil – 185K
• Mohsim Charania – 195K
• Lily Kiletto – 370K

Table 51:

• Victor Ramdin – 310K
• Guillaume Darcourt – 410K

Table 52:

• Carter Swidler – 200K
• Griffin Benger – 370K
• George Caragiorgas – 235K
• Xuan Liu – 43K

Table 53:

• Antonio Esfandiari – 280K
• Jerry Wong – 410K
• Vincent Jacques – 480K

Table 54:

• Eugene Katchelov – 100K
• Kevin MacPhee – 435K

Table 55:

• Pahuja Mukul – 160K

Table 57:

• Ravi K Raghavan – 255K
• Byron Kaverman – 110K

Table 58:

• Jake Schwartz – 140K
• Nicholas P Grippo – 190K
• Shawn Buchanan – 125K
• Sol Bergren – 130K
• Jonathan Little – 460K
• Amir Babakhani – 690K

Table 59:

• Matt Marafioti – 130K
• Martin Malone – 230K
• Ludovic Lacay – 260K

Table 60:

• Ricky Tang – 235K
• Wil Failla – 43K

Table 61:

• Peter Kaemmerlen – 370K
• Kevin Saul – 690K
• Jean-Philippe Piquette – 85K

Table 62:

• Darren Elias – 220K
• Valerie Ross – 80K

Table 63:

• Yann Dion – 245K
• Gavin Smith – 190K
• Greg Ostrander – 100K
• Sylvain Siebert – 580K

Players are finishing up their dinner break and the top stacks in the tournament at this point belong to:

1. Kevin Saul, Amir Babakhani – 690K
2. Sylvain Siebert – 580K
3. Adam Kornuth – 490K
4. Vincent Jacques – 480K
5. Jonathan Little – 460K

With 4 levels to yet to be played tonight and 127 players still alive, it’s looking likely that the money bubble will burst tonight.

 

The players are in level 16, the last level before tonight’s dinner break. The situation at the top of the leaderboard has been a little static today, but two players who had been among the chip leaders but fell off the pace somewhat have come back strongly – both Griffin Benger and Adam Kornuth are back over 400K at this point. As well, Vincent Jacques took a pretty big hit during the last level but managed to rebound almost immediately to re-join the players in the hunt for the lead. Victor Ramdin is also making a run in the past few minutes, putting him within shooting distance of the leaders)

Players eliminated recently include: Jason Koon, Pascal Lefrancois, Shannon Shorr and Sam Greenwood.

Here’s what some of the players still in the field on Day 2 tweeted during the break leading up to level 15:

At 155k going to 1500/3000-500. It has been an uneventful slow grind thus far. Average is 130k. 194 remain, 99 cash.

— Jonathan Little (@JonathanLittle) December 2, 2013

230k going to 1.5/3k/500. #WPTKahnawake

— Griffin Benger (@GriffinBenger) December 2, 2013

WPT Montreal Nice level :) 220k playing 1500/3000 blinds #focus# focus=$ Letsdothis

— Victor Ramdin (@victorramdin) December 2, 2013

back from 2nd break.Got 100k.Av is 135k. 99 paid. 191 left. #WPTMontreal

— Martin Malone (@TheBadgerBoy) December 2, 2013

Meanwhile we lost a few more notable players, such as Isabelle Mercier, Marc Etienne Mclaughlin, Shannon Shorr, Pascal Lefrancois, Chris Back, Jason Mann.

Me suis battue pour ma vie pendant deux heures!!! Malgré ma paire d'As et ma paire de 2 qui ont tenues, j'ai… http://t.co/SOyqrrheH8

— Isabelle Mercier (@IsabelleNoMercy) December 2, 2013

Busto 99<ak for 230k…gl to my friends still in!

— Pascal Lefrancois (@Pass_Lefrancois) December 2, 2013

The break is now over, and level 15 has begun. We’ve spotted dozens of players who have grown their stacks to well over 300K, and the five biggest ones at the break were:

1. Yann Dion – 510K
2. Amir Babakhani – 465K
3. Jerry Wong – 450K
4. Sebastien Drolet-Poitras – 425K
5. Philippe Dumas-Couture – 425K