Marco Caza has separated himself from the Day 1B field here in the partypoker.net WPT Playground, and his 135,875 stack is almost 40,000 ahead of second in chips Doug Hartwick. Below are the top counts through 4 levels of play.

Level 5 has just begun, and 2 levels separate us from the dinner break. Late registration and re-entries will be permitted until the end of the dinner break at 6:15pm.

Some photos from the action in levels 3/4

Dean Murphy is stacking over 17K in chips after running a successful 3 barrel bluff. On the flop of , Marton Szlavy opened the action with a bet of 1,000, and Dean raised immediately to 3,800. Danny Li made the call, and Marton folded.

The dealer put out the on the turn and Dean opened for 5,500. Danny called after no hesitation at all. The river was the , prompting Dean to shove for over 26K, sending Danny into the tank for about a minute, when he somewhat reluctantly folded (he had just over 21K behind).

Dean flipped over the to show the missed straight and flush draws while dragging a pretty nice pot.

It’s too early in the tournament for this leaderboard to be considered “stable” in any way, but the following players have taken an early lead in chips as the players return from break to begin play in level 3.

The field continues to grow and such poker notables as Darren Elias, Max Silver, and Pesh Da Silva – among others, have been in since the beginning of the day. The Canadian contingent is strong as well, with June Jenkins, Alex “Cheese” Allison, Ruben Tarzia, Kelly Kellner, John Paul Tobago, Denis Pederson, Kal Raichura and many more having made the trip.

Photos from level 1 & 2

Montreal is a hotbed of highly skilled NL Hold’em players and today’s field of local pros and other notable players has exploded. Some of the players at the tables:

• Noeung Troeung
• Eric Afriat
• Chanracy Khun
• Marc-Etienne McLaughlin
• Marco Caza
• Charles La Boissonniere
• Rodney Ramalho
• Ruben Perceval
• Jiachen Gong