One of the most notable players still in the event, Players Club member Gavin Smith was eliminated after he shoved 
into 
which ended up making the nut flush.
Brian Coen was eliminated a few hands later by Dawn Mootrey, so the tournament is just one more elimination away from the close of Day 3.
There was a huge hand on Table 34 a few minutes ago. Terrance Eishens open raised from the button to 70K and was 3-bet by Francesco Buffone in the SB to 235K, who in turn was 4-bet by Eric Despres in the BB who bumped it to 500K.
Terrance didn’t think long before folding, and Francesco didn’t think much longer before shoving – which was met by a snap call from Eric.
Francesco turned over 
while Eric flipped 
. The board ran out 
giving Francesco a gunshot. The turn came and the river was another blank, 
. Eric more than doubled to 3.5M chips and now has a healthy 100BB stack as Day 3 winds to a close.
Two more players have busted since the break and the tournament is down to 4 tables.
Table 34
Table 35
Table 38 (Feature)
Table 39
There is another break as tournament staff colours up and races off the yellow 1K chips. After the break, blinds will be 15K/30K/a5K. During the last level the number of players still in the action dropped from 47 to 38.
Here are a few photos from the last level:
Two Playground regular players got involved in big hands just now but with very different results.
First, Josh Kimmel open-shoved his small-blind with about 330K (~13BB) and the big blind (Jonathan Bussieres) called. Josh turned over 
while Jonathan held 
. The board ran out 
and Jonathan’s King high took the pot.
Just a minute or so later, Bill Kontaratos was in the tank for a short while facing a shove to his BB. Eventually he called and flipped over 
while his opponent, Barron Ha, had shoved with 
. The board ran out 
and Bill’s pocket pair held up.
Gavin Smith got his 276,000 chip stack all in preflop with vs Vineet Pahuja’s , and although the flop of 
gave Vineet a gutshot, the running 
and sealed the deal, and doubled Gavin Smith up to 615,000.
The field has dropped from 85 to 47 players in the first two 75 minute levels of Day 3. The players are now enjoying a 20 minute break before getting back into action at level 24, where the blinds will be 12,000/24,000/a4,000. The average stack is around 1 million chips, and don’t forget you can always check our Live Updates Page for up to date coverage of chip counts, as well as to view the live streaming of our Feature Table.
Just before the break we saw Robert Amireault get eliminated in fashion, as he 4-bet shoved his 505,000 chip stack after Dawn Mootrey min-raised to 40,000 UTG, and Guillaume Rivet 3-bet to 114,000 from middle-position. Dawn folded after a few minutes of thought, and Guillaume made the call with . He was dominated by Robert’s 
, but the board ran out 
, giving Guillaume the ace-high straight to knock Robert out and take control of the chip lead. He is now sitting on top of the leaderboard, with a chip stack of around 2.8 million chips. Robert will collect $4,571 for his deep run.
Twitter is always active with players in an event, and Day 3 is no exception…
Up to 930K now. #doingitfor DeeDee #FTPMTL
— Asadul Shah (@Koonz1530) October 1, 2013
Starting to roll…up to 1.3M…avg is 760k…64 left. #FTPMTL
— Josh Kimmel (@Josh_Kimmel) October 1, 2013
Busted! 99 vs QQ ! 71.place That's good! Next time! Thank you #FTPMTL , @FullTiltPoker
— HANA Soljan (@HanaSoljan) October 1, 2013
Day 3 of Event 8, the Main Event of the Full Tilt Poker Montreal Festival, is set to start within the hour with 84 players remaining in pursuit of the $260,581 top prize.
The chip leader going into Day 3 is local player Jeremie Trepanier. Jeremie started Day 2 with a solid – though not leading – 198,200 chips but during the day managed to chip up steadily to a whopping 1,789,000 tournament chips, about 100,000 more than Brian Wright in second place.
Lurking just behind Jeremie and Brian is Vineet Pahuja, a live and online pro from New York who joined the event after having decamped to Montreal to play in PokerStars’ WCOOP events over the past month. Vineet (GPI Rank 256) will start Day 3 with a solid 1,438,000 chips.
In addition to Vineet, there are several other players with high GPI rankings including Team PokerStars pro Victor Ramdin (522,000 chips, GPI Rank 101), Team Full Tilt pro Dermot Blain (223,000 chips, GPI Rank #107), and Yann Dion (658,000 chips, GPI Rank 191). Michael Linster (886,000 chips, GPI Rank 306), the winner of the WPT Bestbet Open last year, is also among the players that will start Day 3 today.
A few of the top Quebec-based pros are also still in the action. Samuel Chartier, Guillaume Rivet, and Carter Swidler have all had a great deal of poker success both online and live and are a threat in any event they enter.
There are still some dangerous Playground Poker Club regulars in the field as well. Bill Kontaratos, Josh Kimmel, Patrick St-Onge, Mike Saragossi, and Robert Amireault are all skilled and experienced big-event players.
Good luck today to all who remain in the event!
