While the players are enjoying a 45-minute dinner break, we’ve tabulated the current leaderboard. Here are the top 7 stacks at the moment:
We are now only 14 eliminations away from being in the money.
We just saw a huge hand between Mike Leah, the chip leader to start the day, and Mukul Pahuja, who just moved to the table.
Mike opened to 10K from the highjack and Mukul 3-bet to 23K from the button. Action was back on Mike, who went all-in for 175K more.
Mike: 
Mukul: 
The board runout gave Mike a pair on the flop: 
but the turn 
and river 
didn’t bring the suckout and Mukul stacked the chips.
On the very next hand, Mukul opened the action preflop from the cutoff. On a board of 
, he called Matthew Grocholsky’s bets on all three streets, including his river shove of 100K – only to table the nut flush, 
.
Mukul has effectively doubled up on the two hands, and is now the clear chip leader in the tournament with around 800K.
Tables have been breaking at a regular pace as players are eliminated from the event and tournament staff keeps things balanced, and there are two recent table moves that could be significant.
First, last year’s runner up in the event Mukul Pahuja has moved to a table that includes Todd Terry, who has been among the chip leaders all day – but also Connor Drinan, Mike Leah, and Mike Watson. So not only are there a ton of chips on the table, but some very experienced and talented players.
The other move of note is that Marc-André Ladouceur has moved to a table that includes Michael McDonald and Eugene Katchelov.
Antonio Esfandiari has made a different kind of significant move – he has been chipping up all day and is now approaching 400K, which puts him in the top tier at this point in the event.
We just saw Jeff Gross play his last hand of this edition of the WPT Montreal, as he called a check-shove from Rodney Ramalho on a flop showing 
. He turned over 
, but was trailing the 
of Rodney. With no help from the running 
, Jeff was eliminated around 40 spots shy of the money.
Other recent notable eliminations include: Jason Mercier, Benjamin Leblond, Dave Swanson, Shannon Shorr, Chanracy Khun, Ryan Rivers, Martin Rauss, Christian Harder, Timothy Reilly, Pratyush Buddiga.
The money bubble is approaching quickly!
Photographs from level 15
Here are the current chip leaders in the tournament. There’s still a long way to go today, and the tournament is still around 60 players from the bubble, but the big stacks are going to start to exert real dominance over their tables as the number of players remaining ticks downwards…
Photographs taken during level 14
Double Belt-winner Jean-Philippe Piquette has been eliminated from the event. He started the day with a very small stack, which he managed to grow somewhat while staving off elimination in the early rounds, but finally he got his stack in the middle holding 
while Jonathan Barrette re-shoved with 
.
The board was dealt: 
and then the turn , which sealed it for JPP. The river was a (frustrating) 
, and Jean Philippe hit the rail.
The players in Day 2 of the WPT Montreal have returned from their first break of the day and we took the opportunity to update the top of the leaderboard while players were away from the tables.
Some of the players eliminated in the first two levels today: Lucas Greenwood, Daniel Smith, Daniel Kelly, Ami Alibay, Byron Kaverman, Logan Dunn, Jeff Madsen, Jonathan Roy, Erwann Pecheux, Guillaume Rivet, Kitty Kuo, Tony Dunst, Brian Rast, and Matt Marafioti.
Leaders after level 12
Marc-André Ladouceur is among the early movers on the leaderboard to start Day 2, having built up his stack to over 440K after eliminating Kitty Kuo just minutes ago. Alim Perales has moved from under 200K to almost 350K during the first level as well. As reported by WPT Live Updates, Alim got most of his increase by taking out two players when his AK made a straight against the AA of Tony Dunst and the 88 held by Samuel Tsehai.
We arrived at Table 53 to see Jeffrey Vandenberg all in on the turn for just under 31K with action on Todd Terry and Connor Drinan still in the hand behind. The community cards by the turn were . Todd made the call, Connor folded and the hole cards were turned over.
Jeffrey:
Todd: 
Jeffrey had turned the straight and had a redraw to the nut flush, but the 
on the river was no help and Todd’s 2nd nut flush was good and Jeffrey was eliminated.
There are just 277 players remaining in the tournament after 40 minutes of level 11.
– and got no help from the run-out of the board.
