With the players on their last break of the day, we took this chance to do some chip counts. Here are the current chipleaders:

1. Maduka Meragal – 733,000
2. TJ Ulmer – 669,000
3. Jeremie Damret – 648,000
4. Jamil Wakil – 636,000
5. Samuel Chartier – 608,000
6. Mukul Pahuja – 574,000
7. Jonathan Jaffe – 560,000
8. Sheraz Nasir – 557,000
9. Mathieu Gagniere – 518,000

A few other counts:

• Alexandre Lavigne – 34,000
• Andrew Frankenburger – 112,000
• Antonio Esfandiari – 220,000
• Kevin MacPhee – 347,000
• Marc-Andre Ladouceur – 390,000
• Mike McDonald – 192,000
• Philippe Plouffe – 350,000
• Scott Jeremy Clements – 235,000
• Vincent Jacques – 183,000
• Xuan Liu – 182,000
• Yann Dion – 306,000

Some photos leading up to the bubble

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(17 Photos)

In a preflop war between Kevin MacPhee (cutoff) and Brian Yoon (button), Kevin 4bet shoved his 176,000 stack and was snapped by Brian.

Kevin:

Brian:

Kevin managed to turn a set on the board, and now sits on a healthy stack on the money bubble.

Scott Clements has eliminated Brian Benhmou in 94th place, stacking a nice pot in the process.

There’s always a lot of activity come bubble time, and a few short stacks have doubled in the past 30 minutes while a few other players have lost big chunks of their stack to the point that surviving the bubble is now in question.

Some impressions on the tables we’ve been looking at:

1. TJ Ulmer has notched up the aggression considerably and has chipped up accordingly, and has won his pots almost entirely before showdown.
2. Brian Yoon is also playing quite a few hands, and made a pretty sick pot-sized value bet a few minutes ago holding just a 7-high flush.
3. Alexandre Lavigne lost half his stack when he tried to take a pot with a healthy bet on the river only to be check called by his opponent, who held pocket 9s (good for middle pair considering the board that had run out).

Just 95 players remain in the tournament.

Sitting on 81,000 in the small blind, Xuan Liu 3bet her stack after Scott Clements opened to 11,000 from middle position. Clements, who started the hand with 187,000, made the call.

Xuan:

Scott:

Xuan was on the brink of elimination, until she paired her king on the river of a board. She now has over 30 big blinds, and is in a good spot to cruise into the money.

The players in the WPT Montreal are now back from their dinner break and with 104 players remaining, the tournament is now in full bubble mode. There are just 14 players to be eliminated before the rest of those in the event are all in the money!

We’ve covered the top of the leaderboard in another post, but since the dinner break is 45 minutes long, we had time to gather counts for some other players in the event.

Players with past success at Playground

• Samuel Chartier – 555K – Won the High Roller this spring during the Spring Classic.
• Vincent Jacques – 234K – 2nd place in the Canada Cup, eliminated in the famous four-way all-in hand.
• Alexandre Lavigne – 121K – Final table of this event in 2013, has won or run deep in several other big events at Playground Poker Club.
• Serge Cantin – 271K – Final table of both the 2012 ad 2013 WPT Montreal.
• Bill Kontaratos – 429K – has final tabled several Playground events with buy-ins greater than $1000.
• Alim Perales – 166K – won a big re-entry event during the Montreal Festival in 2013.

Other notable stacks

• Antonio Esfandiari – 257K
• Mike McDonald – 285K
• Todd Terry – 387K
• Yann Dion – 276K
• TJ Ulmer – 419K
• Philippe Plouffe – 257K
• Scott Clements – 177K
• Xuan Liu – 100K
• Max Greenwood – 268K
• Kevin MacPhee – 175K
• Brian Yoon – 250K

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:

1. Mukul Pahuja – 734,000
2. Jeremy Damret – 555,000
3. Samuel Chartier – 554,000
4. Alexis Urli – 517,000
5. Jonathan Jaffe – 508,000
6. Gianluca Cedolia – 468,000
7. Marc-Andre Racine – 426,000

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.