The event continues to move at a very fast pace. The most recent eliminations are Shaan Siddiqi and Lucas Greenwood in 22nd and 21st places, respectively. The next re-draw is at 18 players remaining, and there are 3 minutes left in the current level after which there will be a 15-minute break. We’ll update all chip counts on the next break.

Robert Taylor just doubled through Eric Afriat to move close to the 1M chip barrier. Meanwhile, on Table 36, Samuel Bisrat Tsehai has increased his holdings to around 670K after eliminating Rene Bourbeau.

There are now 24 players remaining and the pace of the action shows no signs of letting up.

Ari Engel just added over 200K to his stack in a hand with Eric Afriat. We arrived at the table on the flop to a board reading . Ari (utg+1) was thinking about his options after Eric (co) had raised his bet. Ari made the call.

The turn came and this time Ari led out for 95K and Eric called after a few moments of thought. The river was another Jack: and Ari cut out 115K from his stack – leaving only 81K behind. Now Eric went in the tank… but after about 90 seconds, he reluctantly folded.

Ari is now up past 550K in chips.

The tournament is down to 27 players remaining, which precipitated a full seating redraw. Here is the current seating chart:

Table 31

1. John Krpan
2. Robert Taylor
3. Glen Hammers
4. Eric Afriat
5. Yves Loiselle
6. Levi Stevens
7. Edmund John Campion
8. Will Molson
9. Ari Engel

Table 35

1. Jonathan Karamalikis
2. Shaan Siddiqui
3. Jeff Gross
4. Senthuran Vijayaratnam
5. Pascal Lefrancois
6. Tim Reilly
7. Noeung Troeung
8. Dylan Wilkerson
9. Trevor Delaney

Table 36

1. Samual Bisrat Tsehai
2. Kevin Singh
3. Gary Lucci
4. Rene Bourbeau
5. Kevin MacDonald
6. Lucas Greenwood
7. Lu Zhang
8. Logan Dunn
9. Sheraz Nasir

Griffen Benger and Justin Rabba have been eliminated as the tournament draws closer to the redraw at 27 players.

Justin was out in 30th after getting his chips in from middle position. Logan Dunn found the call and the cards were turned over.

Justin:
Logan:

Logan’s pocket pair held up on a board and Justin was sent to the rail.

A few minutes later (on another table) Griffen Benger held and committed his chips on the turn of a board. Current chip leader Lu Zhang made the quick call with top pair , and the on the river didn’t give Griffin either his flush or straight and he left in 29th place.

Players in the partypoker.net WPT Canadian Spring Championship are on their first break of the day and we have some updated chip counts to report. There has been some movement at the top as Ari Engel has lost a good proportion of his stack and is now down to 356K. Here are the current leaders:

1. Jonathan Karamalikis – 1,039,000
2. Lu Zhang – 1,035,000
3. Gary Lucci – 1,018,000
4. Eric Afriat – 890,000

We’ll be moving to counts of the full field for the next count. Also, with just 31 players left in the event, the seating redraw at 27 players is imminent.

The tournament is now down to 36 players remaining, and play now proceeds on 4 tables. From here on out, each time that we lose a table in the tournament there will be a full random seating redraw. The next redraw will be at 27 players remaining, and of course tournament staff will keep the tables balanced as necessary.

We’ll have photos and a list of the most recent eliminations shortly.

As predicted, things have moved very quickly to start the day. In the first hand played we caught one elimination and one double up.

Levon Dedeyan was eliminated from the bb after calling Logan Dunn’s all in bet from utg. Ivan Mamuzic tanked for a while before folding – but he found the fold and Levon called off the rest of his chips with a weak Ace compared with Logan’s KQoff. Logan outdrew Levon on the flop and his pair held up to eliminate the local player.

One table over, Vlad Faubert went all in from middle position for just under 50K and Guillaume “GRiver” Rivet called from the big blind. Both players had strong hands. Vlad held and Guillaume was a the underdog with . Vlad’s Aces held up for the double through GRiver on the board.

UPDATE:

Vlad’s double still left him short and he was eliminated shortly following to exit in 43rd place.