The players who made it to the end of Day 2 have just finished bagging up their chips. There were a total of 566 players who entered the tournament, of which 124 returned this afternoon for Day 2 action.  The day started at 1 PM and played through ten levels of forty minutes each.

Throughout the entire day, there were no players who ran away from the pack and commanded the day, although John Araujo did have the lead for many hours. Many players had stacks that were very similar to each other and they were all in contention right up until the very end of the the last level. When the field returned from their final break of the day, the final two levels played out both fast and furious.  Some of the players were able to double their stacks, others collected payout slips as their day came to an end.

Our chip leader heading into Day 3 is local grinder Adam Cader, who at the final break of the day, was sitting in 3rd place with 890,000.  He managed to work it up to bag the only stack north of 2M chips, bagging an impressive 2,295,000.  He is followed closely by local Christian Rho (1,995,000).  In the end, a total of 16 players bagged chips. The Day 3 seating redraws with full counts for the remaining field will be published when the information becomes available.

Action is now non-stop on each of the last three tables and chips are flying back and forth from player to player.

On table 24, we arrived to see a board, Christian Rho had bet 75,000 and was 3-bet by Mohammada Khalilan to 180,000. Christian then went all-in, and after a long tank, Mohammada finally folded, announcing that “it’s a big fold, I had KJ”.  Christian smiled and said, “well, you would have lost, I flopped a set of 8’s”.

The TD has just announced that there are 3 more hands to play and that will be it for today.

Arriving just as the river hit the board, we saw Griffin Mason all in against Dave Bonneau.  Griffin tells us that he raised pre-flop with pocket Jacks and was 3-bet by Dave, and Griffin insta-called.  Dave was holding Ace-eight off and although he hit an eight on the flop. he bricked the turn and river and headed to the desk to pick up his payout slip.

On table 20, Stephane Blouin-Verroeulst woke up with cowboys and eliminated Matthew Lakins who was holding pocket 3s. As soon as Matthew left the table, David Bolduc-Hamel, sitting next to where Matthew was sitting, announced “I also had pocket 3s and folded them”.

The word is “tight race” as no player is running away with the lead. The new chip leader as we head into the final 2 levels is Jahkheem Polydore (942,000), but there are five other players who are all close behind.  Our previous chip leader, John Araujo, has lost a lot of ground in the last few levels and has now dropped to 6th place (705,000).

With the stacks all so close to each other, any of the the players remaining will be in a position to take the lead should a large hand develop.

We will be walking the floor and looking for the big clashes as play continues.

With 26 players remaining, we are now down to three 9-handed tables.  Players are guaranteed a minimum payout of $660 at this point, but everyone in the room is still looking at making a deep run and cashing the top prize of $19,949.

Notables still left in the field include Rami Hammoud, Adam Cader, Dave Bonneau, John Araujo, Griffin Mason, Bill Kontatratos, David Bolduc Hamel, and Matthew Lakins, to name a few.  Recent bustouts include Ivan Driard, Anderson F., Tyler Lee, and Brigitte Metivier.

Our last break of the night is coming up, and we will be updating the leaderboard shortly.

John Araujo has been crushing all tournament long, due to a combination of good skill mixed with some run good.  His Ace-7 hand vs. AA and AK on a K77 flop was definitely a run good! He remains on top of the leaderboard and is currently our only millionaire.  There are however many skilled players left in the field who are all nursing stacks in the 600K+ range, and, with a timely double up, any of them can jump to the top of the field.

We are playing ten 40 minute levels today so we still have a lot of action to follow.   Check back soon for more updates.