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.

Half-way through the 2nd level to be played today there are already 37 players who have hit the rail and been eliminated from the tournament. This has not been an exceptionally fast pace, but nevertheless that represents a lot of chips and consequently some big swings on the leaderboard.

There is a break after this level during which tournament staff will remove the black T100 chips from play – and while they’re working on that, we’ll put together an updated leaderboard.

The first and only clue that something big had happened was when we noticed Réjean Grenier was moving slowly out of the tournament area, walking down the central aisle of the Tournament Hall.

Réjean had started the day with 242K in chips, however, and had spent most of his Day 1 flight among the chip leaders in that starting day…

It turns out that Steve Savard also started the day with a healthy stack (215K) and when they tangled – it was for all of the chips. Unfortunately we missed the action, but whatever happened, Steve Savard is now playing more than 550K in chips and seems poised to make a deep run.

Only time will tell…

Robert Notkin – the champion of the Canada Cup Main Event held here at Playground Poker Club in 2014 – is out early in Day 2. He started the day with a very small stack (30,800) and within the first 15 minutes of play he had increased his holdings to 46,300 – which were broken down to be counted in the middle of the table when we arrived as Marcello Rosa was making his decision.

Not too much time passed and Marcello made the call and the hands were tabled:

Robert:
Marcello:

The flop was marginally in favour of Robert (but only by a hair): but the turn was fantastic – . The celebrations were short-lived, however – the river spelled the end of the tournament for Robert.