After a very short phase of heads-up play, Henri Balcazar has emerged victorious over Eric Despres and is the champion of the first-ever Full Tilt Poker Montreal Festival Main Event!

The hand he won with was a little out-of-the-ordinary. Despres was actually trying to trap Balcazar holding pocket Kings, but when the flop came down with two diamonds and a three, Balcazar’s   looked pretty good. Balcazar picked up a straight draw on the turn and the on the river sealed it – the 5-high flush was good!

Congratulations to Henri!

1st place: Henri Balcazar, $194,044

2nd place: Eric Despres, $150,000

Michael Linster was a strong chip leader going into 3-way play, but after a long stretch that saw Henri Balcazar chip up considerably, Linster lost a couple of coin flips that made him the short stack on the table.

In the decisive hand, Balcazar raised and Linster shoved for a total of 12.35M. Balcazar thought for a moment and called.

Balcazar:
Linster:

The board ran out and Balcazar’s pair held.

3rd place: Michael Linster, $200,000

The players took a short unscheduled break to discuss a deal and were able to quickly come to an agreement. They agreed that Michael Linster (chip leader) would take $200,000 and both Eric Despres and Henri Balcazar would take $150,000 each. That leaves $44,044 plus the trophy in the prize pool for first place. Play continues.

After a long stretch of play, Guillaume Rivet found himself short-stacked, and after Despres opened to 575K and Balcazar folded, Rivet shoved holding . Linster folded the big blind and the initial raiser snap-called with .

Despres was behind but caught some additional outs on the flop and the gave him a better pair. The on the river was a blank for Rivet and he was eliminated in 4th place.

4th place: Guillaume Rivet, $96,151

The players are now on a slightly extended break but it will do them good to be able to catch their breath after a stunning succession of eliminations towards the end of the last level. There are just 4 players remaining in the tournament after a long period of 7-handed play – but as I wrote earlier, though there were no eliminations the game was anything but static as Michael Linster managed to chip up against the field into a dominant position.

Linster still has a strong chip lead – 20M compared with just under 13M for Guillaume Rivet, 11.5M for Henri Balcazar and 6.2M for Eric Despres – there’s still a chance for Rivet or Balcazar in particular to challenge Linster at the top of the leaderboard.

5th place: Bill Kontaratos, $74,714

6th place: Vineet Pahuja, $58,006

It seemed for a while that something was about to happen, and on this hand it did.

Guillaume Rivet opened the action with a min-raise, Eric Despres called and Roger Lamia 3-bet to 1.3M. Rivet then took a minute or so to think things through and then went all-in for almost 6M (covering both Despres and Lamia). Despres quickly folded but Lamia quickly called.

Rivet: Lamia: . The board brought slight hope to Lamia as the flop came out but the turn and river gave Rivet the pot, adding 4.6M to his stack.

7th place: Roger Lamia, $44,923