Michael Mallette has been having a great day, but we just saw a pretty typical hand in which he ended up shipping something north of 150K across the table. When we arrived at the table short-stacked Sylvain Cote was already all in and Michael had shoved over top to isolate. Unfortunately for him, Denis Cyr had a hand – he called to go all in for his tournament life.

The hands:

Sylvain:
Michael:
Denis:

The community cards came out to give no help to either man holding an Ace, and Denis stacked up the chips.

It’s 15 minutes into level 17 and the leaderboard is remaining more or less intact with Noeung Troeung way ahead of the pack – he’s up over 850K now. Michael Mallette has done well since the break with 620K, and after that are a few players all hovering around the 500K mark: HongKong Nguyen, Joakim Beaupré, Rick Shamshoum, Theodore Doukas, and Peter Senecal are all there.

Rick Shamshoum

Peter Senecal

Noeung Troeung

HongKong Nguyen

Joakim Beaupré

The eliminations have continued at a furious pace, so quickly that it can be difficult to keep track. Here is a full list of eliminations in Day 2 up to about 20 minutes ago.

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Players are back from their break and we have an updated leaderboard as level 16 begins.

1. Noeung Troeung – 746K
2. HongKong Nguyen – 490K
3. Alain Jobin – 475K
4. Michael Mallette – 475K
5. Joakim Beaupré – 450K

Note that Michael Mallette and Alain Jobin are sitting side by side in seats 5 and 6 on table 56. Alain has already made one good laydown to a shove by Michael, but being on his left Alain can put pressure on Michael. Fireworks are to be expected.

Players are about to go on their first break of the day as tournament staff removes the black T100 chips from play. Action has slowed down a little bit, but that’s not to say it’s slow by any means – from the 300 who started the day there are just 206 players left after two full levels.

Here are some photos of the action in level 14, the first level to be played on Day 2 of the Main Event.

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(16 Photos)

Although no one started the day with over 400K in chips, 4 players have already surpassed that level. The first is Alain Jobin, who started the day as chip leader and has grown to solidly over 600K in chips in the first level of play today.

In addition to Alain, Joakim Beaupré, Noeung Troeung, and Philippe Landry have also built up stacks north of 400K as the eliminations continue at a very fast pace.

Some of the players to be eliminated in the opening moments of Day 2:

• Marc Etienne McLaughlin
• Levon Dedeyan
• Gabriel Alarie
• Felix Sides
• Robert Amireault

Blinds in the tournament are now up to 60 minutes in length, and in the first 30 minutes of level 14 we have already seen 30 players eliminated. This is fairly typical as the short stacks to start the day try to double up in order to be more competitive, and the high pace of eliminations will likely continue for at least one level if not longer.

Soon enough, though, and the event will start to approach the money bubble. The trend in Playground events lately has been to not have a sustained period of bubble play, with events often sailing right into the money. This event may very well overturn that trend, though, and we could see the pace of the tournament slow right down as the money bubble approaches.

A total of 300 players have qualified to return for today’s Day 2 of the Main Event in the Playground Poker Montreal Festival, and those players have taken assigned seats in the Tournament Hall as play has begun!

The chip leader to start the day is Alain Jobin, a regular in big events at Playground and who is frequently among the leaders in multi-day events he plays. There are several other Playground regulars still in the event and with a stack to pose a threat, including Ruben Perceval, Ami Alibay, Jeremy Chandler, Carlo Nini, Carla Sabini, Marc-Andre Racine and others.

We can’t only look to the top of the list for players who could go deep in the event though. Lurking among the starters today are some of Montreal’s top poker professionals, who can be dangerous on a Day 2 no matter how many chips they start with. That list starts with Jonathan Duhamel, who is by far the highest profile player still in the field. In addition to Duhamel are players such as Marc Etienne McLaughlin, Derek Lerner, Patrick Braga, and Jean-Philippe Piquette among others.

The last group of players to whom to pay special attention are the list of players who frequently travel for big events at Playground, are very experienced in big events and have had more than their share of success both here at Playground and elsewhere. This list includes players like Nicola Basile, Gaetano Di Maria, Amir Babakhani, David Baba and many many more.

While the field may not be stacked with touring pros, from experience it is stacked with very accomplished players and we’re sure for a great day of poker.