The three tables hosting the 26 players had been playing in the hand per hand format for a few hands when the bubble was eliminated. Fernand Gaudreault, who had seen his chips go on a roller coaster ride all night tried his luck at the 11th hour. Holding 
, his had lacked the glitter of a premium hand but wasn’t too bad. His all-in only got one call, but unfortunately for him, it was from Zheng-Yi Xie. Table chip leader Zheng-Yi was seen bullying the table throughout pretty much every hand since the “hand per hand” play had started. And he was on fire.
Even though Zheng-Yi’s hand was nothing to write home about, except if you are Doyle, he felt pretty confident with his 
.
The 
flop pushed all the air out of Fernand’s lungs; not good at all. His only ray of sunshine was that at least Zheng-Yi’s lowest card had hit. Unfortunately, the 
on the turn and the 
on the river offered no help and the gracious player had to admit defeat, in the despised bubble position.
Congratulations to:
- Gabriel A
- Natalia Nogina
- Nirvair Sandhu
- Jose Juan Gomez Casillas
- Robert William Smyth
- Brigitte Korak
- Michele Oriente
- Alexandre Mongrain
- Antoine Sankari
- Michael Corovine
- Frederick Gougeon
- Christian Rho
- Yan Gohier
- Frederic Cossette
- Zheng-Yi Xie
- Daniel Belisle
- Sarraco Pasquale
- Van Nghiem Nguy
- Francois Tarrab
- Elvira Popescu
- David St-Louis
- Tomislav Pavkovic
- Donald Abdelhay
- Jocelyn Poirier
- Kamal Sadaka
All it took was a little more than five hours, but here are the 25 lucky winners of STEP 3 tickets:
