When Richard Shamshoum opened the pot to 4.5K, Jonathan Brazeau announced all-in. His words were echoed 3 times around the table, and the initial raiser got out. 4 players went to showdown! Here are the hands, in chronological order of investment:

Jonathan Brazeau:
Marc Saddik:
Ian Armorer:
Maurice Simard:

Jonathan did not have a huge stack, but he was almost healthy. Marc had more chips and a better hand. Ian was very low and with a quadruple up in mind, decided to shoot the dice. Maurice closed the action with nothing less than the best hand. The board was revealed:

As clean as it gets. Maurice raked half the table and is looking very good going into the last level of the night, with 3 tables of 8 players in the field.

Day 1B of the Strangers in the Night event is going into its last segment, and a small group of players are doing especially well for themselves, led by Johannes Verhoeven. These four guys have been doing good work for quite a while, and are steadily adding to their riches, confirming that they belong in Day 2.

After a few players limped in, Alexandre Bergeron-Cyr raised to 3.5K. Jason Guiley, one of the limpers, went all-in for about 20,000 chips. Alexandre made the call.

Jason:
Alexandre:

Board:

The dreadful queen appeared right away, and without an ace on the run out, Jason had to walk away.

Robert Turcotte, the first to invest, raised to 4.5K. The action was folded around to Hicham Hammoud, who flatted the bet, and Christian Larocque made it 14.5K to go from the blind. Robert, facing a solid bet, made the call, and so did Hicham, despite the fact that the bet represented about half his stack.

A 14.5K continuation bet was placed, and Robert, after carefully counting his stack, announced all-in. Hicham folded, and Christian decided to see him.

Right away, Robert congratulated him for the good call, but it was far from over.

Robert:
Christian:

Board:

The second break just passed, and while players were stretching their legs, we took the time to update the leaderboard. Maxime Argento is still doing very well, currently our only player with a 6-figure stack. There is a pack right on his heels, however, and it would take a handful of people no more than than 1 pot to grab the driver’s seat.

Here are our top runners:

Antoine Simon takes no prisoners. When Dave Jeannot-Cyr got involved preflop, Anderson Graham went in for about 7K. His short stack all-in bet was called by Simon, and Jeannot-Cyr committed his own stack, worth about 21K. Simon made the call, and they went to a 3-way showdown.

Jeannot-Cyr:
Simon:
Graham:

Anderson Graham was in a hurt locker, with very few card combinations that could help him. The flop was extremely good for him, as he was now only a huge underdog with 2 outs for a win, a clear improvement from his preflop status.

Board:

Simon scooped the pot and is now a force in the tournament.