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.

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.