David Peters opened the action with a raise to 45K. Brendan Baksh then raised to 112K, only to be faced with an instant 4-bet to 235K from Eric Afriat. David got out of the way and action was back on Brendan, who chose to shove for 914K. Eric thought for just under one minute and made the call.

Brendan:
Eric:

Eric was well in the lead and poised to put a stranglehold on the tournament… until the flop came – Brendan had hit one of the three outs he needed to take the lead. Another pair of 8s came on the turn and river ( ) and Brendan doubled up.

In a hand on the other table just a couple of minutes later, Brady Hinnegan doubled through Ryan Rivers when his flopped straight beat Ryan’s top pair (with an open-ended draw). Brady is now up to around 1.1M in chips

Alex Keating has taken a major hit as Mohammad Abu-Hadbah has doubled through about 20 minutes into today’s session.

Alex open raised to 50K, and instantly shoved over the top of Mohammad’s 3-bet. Mohammed made the call.

Alex:
Mohammad:

Things started out well for Alex with a in the window – but the door card was the to put Mohammad beyond reach. The other flop card was the and the turn and river ran out .

Alex dropped to around 280K in chips, just 14bb.

The 16 players still in the WPT Montreal have assembled at Tables 65 and 66 in the Tournament Hall and play is now underway for Day 4 of the event. Play will continue today until there are 6 players remaining, and move to a single table when 9 players remain.

Play so far has been cautious to say the least, but with a few short-stacked players in the field things will get moving before too long.

The 2017 WPT Montreal is down to two tables – 16 players – and action is set to resume in just 30 minutes here at Playground Poker Club. Eric Afriat is the current chip leader with a 600K margin on Curt Kohlberg, in 2nd place. Here are profiles we prepared about each of the remaining players.

• Eric Afriat (120bb)
  Eric is a very successful local player who is a member of the WPT Champion’s Club, having won the WPT Seminole Hard Rock Showdown in Hollywood, Florida in 2014. He has had a lot of other success as well, including a win and another final table in Bellagio Cup events in Las Vegas in 2012 and a WPT Final Table appearance at Bellagio in 2010. Eric has had success here on his home turf, but he has yet to win a big one – a fact he’ll want to change asap!
• Curt Kohlberg (90bb)
  Curt’s “home field” is Foxwoods Casino, where he’s had a ton of success with published results going back to the late 90s, but he’s also a regular big-event visitor at Playground Poker. With over $3M in lifetime earnings, he’s not a player to be overlooked. Card Player profiled Curt in 2011.
• Ryan Rivers (83bb)
  Ryan has over $500K in lifetime earnings, but is perhaps most famous for his participation in the final table of the Canada Cup right here at Playground Poker Club. He was part of the infamous four-way all-in that brought the premature end of the tournament.
• Maxime Heroux (82bb)
  Maxime is a local player that doesn’t have a ton of published live results but has demonstrated a high level of skill over the years in events here at Playground Poker Club.
• Duff Charette (79bb)
  Duff hails from the Ottawa area and has been making a name for himself on the international poker scene with results in the US, Canada, Australia, Asia, and Europe in the past couple of years. He has almost $350K in live earnings and knows how to close out an event – he won the Deepstacks Poker Tour’s Tour Championship event in 2016.
• Bradley Ellis (79bb)
  Brad hails from Nova Scotia and most recently booked a 4th place finish in a $1K event in Charlottetown, PEI.
• Derek Wolters (63bb)
  Derek is an experienced professional player with published live results going back to 2010. He’s still looking for a big championship score.
• David Peters (61bb)
  David is one of the most superbly experienced players on the world poker scene today. With 6-figure scores dating back to 2008 and over $18M in lifetime earnings, Peters’ resume needs little burnishing – but a WPT Championship would certainly add to his renown.
• Alex Keating (53bb)
  Alex is famous for his excellent banter and terrific beard – but none of that should distract from the fact that he’s a tremendously experienced and successful poker pro with almost $1.5M in lifetime live earnings… and a 13th place finish in this very event last year. He’s also looking to improve on his best-ever WPT Championship finish, which was a 3rd place finish in the 2016 WPT LA Poker Classic.
• Brendan Baksh (43bb)
  Brendan hails from California and while he hasn’t had a huge live score, he is an experienced player with published results from events in Las Vegas and LA.
• Feizal Satchu (32bb)
  Feizal is a very experienced player from Toronto who has been playing big event poker for almost a decade and booked a 21st place finish in the 2016 WPT Montreal. He has already improved on that finish – we’ll see how deep he can run this year.
• Mohammad Abu-Hadbah (31bb)
  We weren’t able to find a lot of information about Mohammad’s poker career online, but there is at least one mention of him in a tournament at the Emperors Palace Hotel and Casino in South Africa.
• Brady Hinnegan (29bb)
  Brady is a regular visitor at Playground Poker Club for big events, and managed to book a big win in the Card Player Poker Tour event here in 2016. He has published results going back to 2009.
• Patrick Quinn (23bb)
  Patrick comes from Toronto and has published results from events in Las Vegas, Atlantic City, and Florida.
• Justin Liberto (23bb)
  Justin is one of the more experienced players in the field at this point, with published results going back to 2009 and a WSOP Bracelet on his resume. He has almost $2.5M in lifetime live earnings and though he starts with a relatively short stack, no one would do well to overlook this player as they try to move ahead in the event.
• Adam Shannon (17bb)
  Adam starts the day with the short stack in the tournament, and little in the way of published results.

The WPT Montreal players are on a short break, and once one more elimination takes place they will bag their chips onto Day 4. The most recent elimination was of Darren Keyes, who took 18th place for $21,390.00.

Eric Afriat has climbed into the top spot on the leaderboard after a strong level 22, and returns to level 23 with 2,447,000. Second in chips is David Peters with 1,839,000, while Curt Kohlberg rounds the top 3 with 1,810,000.

Once play concludes in Day 3, we will publish the full list of player-reported chip counts along with the Day 4 seating draw.

Photographs from level 22: