A huge pot just developed on table 70, resulting in a new chip leader.

We caught up to the action on the flop in a three-way pot between Chan An Luong, Mikael Guenard and Eric Aucoin. With the board showing , Chan An fired a bet of 185,000 into a pot which already had a few hundred thousand in it. Mikael 3bet all-in from the cutoff for 517,000, and Eric then 4bet all-in for around twice that amount from the button. Chan An went into the tank for a minute, before folding what he later said was Ax 8x.

Mikael and Eric were then asked to table their hands, and Mikael saw he was in big trouble with only , as his opponent flop a set with . The running and brought no change, eliminating Mikael in the process.

With that pot, Eric climbed to around 2,600,000, and took over the chip lead here in Day 3 of the Main Event in the Montréal Poker Expo. Moments later he scooped another big pot off of Chan An, bringing him up to around 3,200,000.

Only 19 remain, and with one more elimination we will have another full seating redraw.

Eliminations have been stacking up as the pace of play has picked up quite a bit since the tournament became a 3 table affair. Just since then we have already lost the following players:

• Michelle Reyes, 27th place
• Poorya Nazari, 26th place
• Buck Ramsay, 25th place
• Jean Francois Bouchard, 24th place
• Yohann Wagner, 23rd place

Play continues with 22 players on 3 tables. There will be another redraw at 18 players remaining, when the tournament moves to 2 tables.

We were following the hand between Faisal and Xin on another table while Alain Desbiens got his depleted stack in the middle and lost, eliminating him in 28th place.

There has been a full seating redraw and the tournament is now down to 3 tables.

We just saw a very dramatic hand between Faisal Khan and Xin Qi on table 58.

We arrived at the table to see Xin deciding whether to call a 3bet pre to about 160K. He made the call and the pot was over 350K preflop. The flop was dealt: and Faisal opened to 145K – Xin called without much hesitation. The turn was the and Faisal decided to check.

Xin then opened all-in for another 330K – close to half the pot. Faisal went in the tank. He looked very disturbed by his decision, thinking, re-checking his cards, mumbling to himself, re-re-checking his cards… until eventually he found a fold and Xin stacked a huge pot.

Xin is now up to just under 1M in chips, while Faisal is down to 425K.

Play has re-started in the Main Event of the Montréal Poker Expo with 28 players remaining. As mentioned in the intro post a few minutes ago, there will be a full seating redraw after one elimination today – we’ll post a new seating chart as soon as it’s available.

Day 3 of the Main Event of the Montréal Poker Expo is about to get under way with 28 players remaining in contention for the big prizes in the tournament!

The beginning of the action today will be a little bit stop/start, because although there was a redraw to begin Day 3, there is another redraw scheduled for 27 players remaining, so after a single elimination today, all seats will be redrawn.

Leading the pack today is Kevin MacDonald, who is well known at Playground Poker Club having made deep runs in several big events here over the years, including a 5th place in a $5K High Roller event. Joining Kevin with over a million in tournament chips are 3 other players: Robert Johnson, Mikael Gurnard, and Eric Aucoin.

Further down the player list are quite a few players who have already made their mark on the poker world and are capable of making a deep run in the event, including Poorya Nazari (PCA Main Event winner in 2009) and Chanracy Khun, a Players Club member at Playground who has a WPT title under his belt along with several deep finishes in other events worldwide.

There are also two past champions of past $1.1K Events here at Playground still in the field: Buck Ramsay and Faisal Khan. Obviously they have some experience in this format.

In fact, though, the entire remaining field has proven themselves worthy to have achieved what they have, and a truly deep run in the event will take skill, experience, and, yes, a little “run-good”!

Good luck today to all of the remaining players!

Play on Day 2 re-started with 171 players still in contention, and although eliminations from the tourney were quite rapid to begin with, as the tournament wound inexorably to the bubble, the pace of play slowed as every decision became much larger in comparison with the early stages of the event.

Inevitably, though, the bubble was achieved and from 72nd place on, every exiting player made a stop at the tournament desk to pick up a payout ticket.

At the end of the scheduled 8 levels, there were just 28 players remaining and these 28 have all bagged their chips until the re-start tomorrow (Tuesday) at 12pm. Here is the official re-draw of tournament seating along with player-reported chip counts for each player left in the tournament.