It’s truly amazing that Tony To has any chips at all, let alone enough to run a big river bluff – but when we arrived at the table with already dealt, GameBoy was considering his action, playing out of position against Brian Altman. Eventually he confidently exclaimed, “four hundred and fifty K” and pushed out 4 stacks of blues with 2 greys on top.

Brian immediately counted out the chips required to call, and found that he would have under 100K left if he lost… and then after a gut-check he made the call and showed his for Aces up – which was good against Tony’s .

Jason Mann raised from the hijack to 135K and Brian Altman 3-bet all-in from the cutoff. The blinds folded and Jason asked for confirmation of the amount: 412K total. Jason counted out the chips needed to call and then rearranged the margins of his stack a couple of times… and made the call.

Brian:
Jason:

Community cards:

The board didn’t bail Jason out and Brian scored the full double up.

Azim “Sammy” Popatia and Mads Fournaise were eliminated early in level 24, and with the field down to 18 players there has been a full seating redraw.

A word on the schedule – play will continue to the end of the current level and then the remaining players will bag up their chips to return for Day 4. On Day 4, play will continue until a hard stop at 6 players remaining (TV final table).

Table 32

1. Jason Mann
2. Brian Altman
3. Craig Stewart
4. Tony Vi Thanh To
5. Giacomo Fundaro
6. Harpreet Gill
7. Randall David Pfeifer
8. Rainer Kempe
9. Darryll Fish

Table 40

1. James Yang
2. Spencer McLean
3. AJ Gambino
4. Chris Arvanitis
5. Carter Swidler
6. Michael Dentale
7. Jared Mahoney
8. Darren Elias
9. Trevor Delaney

There’s a break after each level, so we’ll be able to keep the chip counts fully updated at least as often once a level. During the last break we updated everyone’s counts – here are the top stacks going into level 24 tonight:

Mike Dentale was in a pot with Sammy Popatia facing a river bet of 175K into a pot of approximately 370K with a board reading . The flop was 3-way and had gone check-check-check, then on the turn, Sammy opened the action to around 110K and found one fold but a call from Mike. Mike checked again on the river and Sammy made his bet… and Mike went in the tank, visibly running through ranges and possible hands Sammy might have.

Finally (though no one seemed inclined to call time), Mike flicked a single 5K chip to make the call… and flipped over – which he was certain was 100% good. And he was correct – Sammy flashed an off-suit Queen – Jack.

The dealer pushed the pot.

The remaining 24 players in the WPT Montreal are just back from an extended break and we took the opportunity to refresh the chip counts for the entire field. Visit the “Live” Counts page for the full list.

The short summary version is that there are currently 3 players effectively tied for the lead with 1.8M chips: Harpreet Gill, AJ Gambino, and Trevor Delaney. The entire top 10 are currently playing more than 900K – and after that there is a little cliff down to the next group of players in the 500K to 600K range.

Play has slowed right down from the pace that has characterized much of today, but the slow pace won’t last – there are enough short stacks that we can expect movement before long.