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

Event 8 has gone an hour since the last elimination (including a break) but the action has been anything BUT static. The players are being pretty cagey but Mike Linster has managed to chip up handily against the field up to over 19M tournament chips.