Jean-Francois Bouchard has been amongst the big stacks for most of this Day 1a, and although he recently lost a few chips, he just took a huge pot of table-mate Jeffrey Cormier to regain a spot atop the leaderboard.

Apart from a preflop raise, action was rather quiet until the turn, with a board showing . This is where things blew up, as we saw a raising war between the two players which finished when both of their stacks were in the middle. Jeffrey opened up for two-pair, but was drawing dead to Jean-Francois and his set of . To add insult to injury, the river brought the , filling up both players.

With that pot, Jean-Francois jumped up to over 125,000, which is likely one of the biggest stacks in the room.

Jean-Francois Bouchard

It’s only been half a level since we last did an update on the chip counts, and at the time Sylvain Siebert was in 2nd place holding just north of 100,000. Since then, he has increased his stack to nearly 180,000, putting him in the driver seat of this Day 1a.

Late registration is now over, and this starting flight saw a total of 144 players. Play has been brought down to 9-handed poker, and will remain so until the end of the day.

Sylvain Siebert

Sylvain Siebert

There are a few players of note in the field – notable because of past successes here in big events at Playground Poker Club.

• Jean-Philippe Piquette – JPP aka @PiquetteAces is a Players Club member who once took down the Main and the High roller back to back in the same festival. He takes a lot of ribbing from his friends, who sometimes give him the nickname “Mincash” – but in fact he’s a very skilled player with a decade of strong published results around the world.
• Alexandre Lavigne – Alex hasn’t been around as long as some of some of the players in this event, but he’s had some amazing success at Playground including 2 big event final tables.
• Timothy Ulmer – TJ is an American player who adopted – and was adopted by – Montreal after Black Friday. He can sit at a live tournament table and remain incognito for hours – but he’s one of the top online legends in the history of poker, and his strong, creative play “outs” him before too long.
• Ami Alibay – Ami is a local player who has been touring the circuit for about 18 months and has had some success along the way. Runner-up in a $10K High Roller tournament here at Playground in May of 2014, Ami is also one of the friendliest guys at the tables – though players shouldn’t confuse friendliness for weakness!
• André Boyer – André was Quebec’s first WSOP bracelet winner over a decade ago – and he’s also one of our most recent winners, as he managed to win a second WSOP bracelet this past summer in Las Vegas! Plus, almost a decade before he won his first bracelet he was a WSOP Main Event final tableist…
• Sylvain Siebert – Sylvain is a pure Playground Poker Club legend. Every time he plays he seems to have success – including 3 final tables at 3 different WPT events held here at Playground over the years.

Here are some shots of the early action in the Main Event of the Montréal Poker Expo.