Kevin MacDonald was amongst the shorter stacks in the room a few moments ago, however he has just doubled up twice in the last orbit to climb over the 1 million chip mark.

In the first hand, he pushed all-in for just under 200,000 on a board showing , and found a call from Azim Popatia. Kevin tabled , and had a lockdown on the hand as Azim showed .

Moments later, he found himself in the middle of a betting war on a flop showing , where he winded up all-in versus opponent Steve Savard. Kevin tabled for the nut straight, and only had 4 outs to fade to hold the win versus Steve’s . The running cards were the and the , and Kevin succesfully doubled up his stack once again, this time bringing him up over 1 million in chips.

Former chip leader Michael M was trying to use the pressure of the bubble to win himself a few extra chips, but his plan backfired as he ended up finishing on the money bubble here in the Main Event of the Montréal Poker Expo.

He opened from early position, and called a 3bet by Xin Qi from the cutoff. The flop came , and with only about 75,000 in the pot, Michael open-shoved for 310,000, an over-average stack at the time. Xin, who had Michael covered, tanked for a moment, but eventually threw in some calling chips.

Michael:
Xin:

Xin only had a few outs to fade to take down this massive pot, and with the running cards bringing the , he propelled himself into or near the chip lead, now holding roughly 750,000.

Two players busted immediately after the break and so play is now hand for hand with 73 players remaining. The next player to bust will go home empty-handed, and everyone else will be in the money.

The remaining players in the Main Event just went on a scheduled break, during which tournament staff removed the purple T500 chips from play. At the break there were just 75 players remaining, meaning that just 3 players had to be eliminated before the rest of the field was in the money.

Here is an updated leaderboard at the break.

With just 15 eliminations from the money bubble, a few players are putting together monster stacks to position themselves for a profitable bubble period.

Most notable is Cong Son Dao, who has now grown his stack to over 680K. Poorya Nazari is just a little behind at approximately 635K and lurking within striking distance are Mike Leah (540K) and Faisal Khan (510K).

Marcello Miceli has been among the chip leader conversation all day, but he just won a monster hand to make him the next player to grow his stack past the half-mil mark – even after doubling another player up the following hand, he’s still playing just a shade under 550K.

Players have returned from their first break of the day as tournament staff has removed the T100 chips from play. We have compiled a top-five leaderboard at the break. Jared Newcombe is in the lead, as he recently doubled through Steve Savard (who had amassed over 550K earlier in the day).

We should add that there is a glut of players in the 325K to 375K band currently, including such players as TJ Ulmer, Cong Son Dao, Chan An Wong, Marcello Miceli, Mikael Gurnard, and others.