The last break has just passed us in Day 3 of the WPT Montreal, and players have one more 90-minute level to go before bagging onto Day 4.

23 players remain, lead by Terry Leon Schumacher and his army of 2,511,000 chips. Robert Earl McGhee and Benny Chen have also dove into the 2-million mark, while Ema Zajmovic follows them closely.

Here are the full counts to start level 24:

First Name | Prénom	Last Name | Nom	Stack | Tapis
Terry Leon	Schumacher	2,511,000
Robert Earl	McGhee	2,203,000
Benny	Chen	2,054,000
Ema	Zajmovic	1,885,000
Jonathan	Abdellatif	1,141,000
Ilan Charlot	Boujenah	1,141,000
Tam	Ho	912,000
Alexander William	Keating	728,000
Kevin	MacDonald	649,000
Antonin	Duda	643,000
Ryan Michael	D'Angelo	632,000
Nadir	Lalji	586,000
Samuel Louis	Gagnon	575,000
Jake	Schwartz	572,000
Jason	Mann	493,000
Theodore	Doukas	459,000
Martin	Raus	455,000
Feizal	Satchu	348,000
Mike	Sexton	328,000
Justin	Liberto	325,000
Dakota	Vandine	290,000
Stuart	Taylor	271,000
Ivan	Fazal Karim	238,000

Andy Frankenberger had played his small stack very solidly all day, perhaps getting a small boost from his excellent “buy bagels for your competitors” karma, but his stack never grew to among the dominant stacks – and after a beat that we missed he was left with just 75K.

Jonathan Abdellatif limped from utg and Andy shoved over the top for 75K.

With so few chips at stake, Terry Schumacher made the call, there were a couple of folds and then both Ema Zajmovic (bb) and Jonathan Abdellatif – called as well.

Flop:

Terry led out for 85K and both of the other folded, so the cards were turned on their backs:

Andy:
Terry:

The turn was the , giving Andy a sliver of hope, but the river closed out the hand and the tournament for Andy Frankenberger.

The mood is extremely tense among the final 24 players in the WPT Montreal, and despite several players being relatively short-stacked, there has been little movement since the most recent eliminations at the beginning of this level. There have been plenty of huge hands – but seemingly plenty of difficult folds as well.

Samuel Louis Gagnon has just doubled through Robert McGhee – a big enough change to possibly change the dynamic at the table. McGhee has been among the chip leaders for much of the day, and in this hand he had raised from the button to 49K. Ryan D’Angelo folded his small blind and Gagnon shoved for 448K. McGhee went in the tank for some time before finally making the call.

McGhee:
Gagnon:

There was a pretty decent sweat for Gagnon as the flop was dealt: although we learned after the hand that with the TV light reflecting off the card face, he couldn’t really see the cards. In any case the turn came , the river came and Gagnon faded McGhee’s flush draw and stacked a nice pile of grey T25,000 chips that he received from McGhee.

With a short break at hand, we brought an update on chip counts of the final 27 players. Ilan Charlot Boujenah is leading the field as play enters level 23, but he is closely followed by a handful of opponents. Poorya Nazari was cripple on the last hand before the break and with one ante to his name, he is in need of some serious run-good to bring him back into the game.

Here are the full counts of the 27 finalists:

First Name | Prénom	Last Name | Nom	Stack | Tapis
Ilan Charlot	Boujenah	1,602,000
Robert Earl	McGhee	1,542,000
Terry Leon	Schumacher	1,405,000
Justin	Liberto	1,325,000
Tam	Ho	1,316,000
Benny	Chen	1,136,000
Jonathan	Abdellatif	1,086,000
Ema	Zajmovic	911,000
Nadir	Lalji	877,000
Antonin	Duda	846,000
Jason	Mann	628,000
Kevin	MacDonald	549,000
Dakota	Vandine	534,000
Alexander William	Keating	523,000
Theodore	Doukas	510,000
Mike	Sexton	509,000
Stuart	Taylor	499,000
Feizal	Satchu	489,000
Ryan Michael	D'Angelo	423,000
Ivan	Fazal Karim	409,000
Samuel Louis	Gagnon	395,000
Jason	James	373,000
Izhak	Aliasi Sini	353,000
Martin	Raus	349,000
Jake	Schwartz	333,000
Andrew	Frankenberger	240,000
Poorya	Nazari	3,000

After unknown action that saw Stuart Taylor, Ema Zajmovic, and Andy Frankenberger in the hand on the flop, the dealer laid out . Stuart checked from early position and Ema led out for 58K. Andy, playing from the button, made the call and Stuart folded.

The turn came and after a couple of seconds of thought, Ema checked. Andy thought for a while and reacted to the check with a shove – which found a snap call from Ema. Andy was drawing dead:

Ema:
Andy:

The river came but nothing was going to help Andy – Ema counted out 255K total chips behind to be paid.

With 29 players left in play, Andrew Paul Grose moved all-in from the cutoff for 102K, and was quickly followed by an all-in of 184K from Feizal Satchu in the small blind. Geoffrey Hum looked down at his hole cards in the big blind, and with only a few thousand more than Feizal, opted to call both all-ins to close the action 3-way.

Andrew:
Feizal:
Geoffrey:

Feizal got the best of the board to score the near-triple up, sending Andrew home and crippling Geoffrey in the process. Geoffrey was left with 11K behind, which he lost on the very next hand.

With those two eliminations, the field is now down to 27 players, bringing on a redraw for the final 3 tables. The current chip leaders in the tournament are Justin Liberto and Ilan Boujenah, both of whom are playing approximately 1,650,000 in chips, with Robert Earl McGhee just behind them at 1,350,000. We’ll have full counts for the remaining field at the next break.

Here are the new seating assignments for players in the WPT Montreal:

First Name | Prénom	Last Name | Nom	Seat | Siège
Martin	Raus	Table 38 - Seat 1
Izhak	Aliasi Sini	Table 38 - Seat 2
Feizal	Satchu	Table 38 - Seat 3
Dakota	Vandine	Table 38 - Seat 4
Robert Earl	McGhee	Table 38 - Seat 5
Ryan Michael	D'Angelo	Table 38 - Seat 6
Samuel Louis	Gagnon	Table 38 - Seat 7
Jason	Mann	Table 38 - Seat 8
Ivan	Fazal Karim	Table 38 - Seat 9
Antonin	Duda	Table 39 - Seat 1
Ema	Zajmovic	Table 39 - Seat 2
Jonathan	Abdellatif	Table 39 - Seat 3
Poorya	Nazari	Table 39 - Seat 4
Andrew	Frankenberger	Table 39 - Seat 5
Terry Leon	Schumacher	Table 39 - Seat 6
Stuart	Taylor	Table 39 - Seat 7
Tam	Ho	Table 39 - Seat 8
Justin	Liberto	Table 39 - Seat 9
Ilan Charlot	Boujenah	Table 40 - Seat 1
Benny	Chen	Table 40 - Seat 2
Mike	Sexton	Table 40 - Seat 3
Alexander William	Keating	Table 40 - Seat 4
Theodore	Doukas	Table 40 - Seat 5
Jake	Schwartz	Table 40 - Seat 6
Jason	James	Table 40 - Seat 7
Kevin	MacDonald	Table 40 - Seat 8
Nadir	Lalji	Table 40 - Seat 9

 

There have been two almost simultaneous eliminations in the WPT Montreal that brings the tournament to 37 players – just one away from the next table break.

The first of the two hands saw today’s chip leader Michael Gathy ship his remaining 300K+ to Benny Chen on his left. It was a blind-on-blind hand with a short raising war that eventually saw all the chips in the middle.

Michael:
Benny:

The bad news for Michael was immediate: on the flop put Benny in the lead and the turn and river couldn’t save him. Benny has vaulted himself among the overall leaders with over 1.4M in chips.

An instant later, Jeffrey Cormier got it all in against the player to his left, Ryan D’Angelo. Cormier had while Ryan was playing , and when the community cards were dealt , Ryan’s pair was still best and he slid Jeffrey’s stack to merge it with his own.

The first level of play today in the WPT Montreal has come to a close. There’s a break following each level, and while the 42 players left were away from the table we surveyed the 5 tables for the current chip leaders.

First Name | Prénom	Last Name | Nom	Stack | Tapis
Jason	Mann	1,135,000
Tam	Ho	1,024,000
Ema	Zajmovic	992,000
Alex	Keating	894,000

The big “gainer” so far is Jason Mann, who along with Tam Ho are the only tournament-chip-millionaires so far. Ema Zajmovic has held her own through the early play, while Alex Keating has ridden beard-power to a powerful stack of almost 900K in chips. Also to note is that Darryll Fish – one of the smaller stacks to start the day – is now up to 645,000 – a much healthier total at this time.

Ilan Charlot Boujenah has taken a hit so far and is down to around 310K after spending much of Day 2 as the chip leader. Michael Gathy has also lost chips so far – he’s now playing about 400K, down about 50% from his starting stack this morning.

One final anecdote from the first level of play today. Andy Frankenberger started the day with relatively few chips and it was surprising that he was late to arrive. But his tardiness was excused by extreme altruism: this morning he dropped by Fairmount Bagel to pick up fresh Montreal bagels for the entire field!

The WPT Montreal is now down to 44 players as David Sorgente, Azim Popatia, and Seena Abedi-Sarvestani have all been eliminated. At 45 players a table was broken, leaving just 5 tables in play at the moment.

Photos from level 20

Play resumed just 30 minutes ago but already there has been a ton of action in Day 3 of the WPT Montreal.

Chris “D0r1t0s” McClung was the first to exit in 49th place after his all-in raise with was called by Nadir Lalji, who held – a pair that held on the board.

Next up was a 3-way all-in involving Michael Malm, Mike Sexton, and another player. We missed the action, but Sexton held and managed to triple up in the hand while Malm hit the rail in 48th place.

The third elimination in this series was Darren Elias, who hit his King on the flop – while Tam Ho hit his Ace as well.