Level 8 has just wrapped up and during the break we counted the chips to find the current chip leaders for this 5th of 7 live starting flights. Christine Do, our leader after level 4, continues to be the front runner with more than 300,000 chips. The next closest stack is more than 100,000 chips behind her.

Today’s flight has already amassed 547 entries and there are still 50 minutes remaining before the end of late registration.

We arrived at the table with the flop of already dealt. Nektarios Papadedes, in early position, checked – and was met with a shove from Ajay Gnanasambanthan, who had just over 30K in his stack and covered Nektarios, who had just 19,200 behind.

Nektarios clearly wasn’t happy about the position he was in, but thought for over a minute – and it seemed even longer than that – and finally made the call.

Nektarios:
Ajay:

Whatever calculations he did to help him make the call paid off – Nektarios’ Jacks were still good on the Ace-high board. The turn and river brought – nothing changed.

Here are some photos of the action taking place during level 8. We have a huge number of entries today. Currently there are 523 entries, and there is still 1 hour and 30 minutes before the end of late registration.

Aaron Motoyama raised 1,000 preflop from late position and Richard Drolet and Antony Pelletier both called. After the flop revealed , Richard raised 1,500, Antony folded, and Aaron called.  After the turn both players checked. But on the river, when the was flipped Aaron immediately raised 5,500. After Richard peeked at his cards, he called.

When Aaron turned over his pair of queens revealing a straight, Richard shook his head and returned his cards to the dealer.

At the end of the first break today, the clock was paused while partypoker Chairman and former WPT Montreal Champion Mike Sexton and the World Poker Tour’s Ging Masinda took to the microphone to welcome the players.

And the players in the WPT500 have turned out in massive numbers! With over 2 hours remaining to enter (or re-enter) in this starting flight, there are already 481 entries today, bringing the total so far to 1,767!

The players in Day 1E of the WPT500 have just taken their first break of the day, and while the players were away from the tables we surveyed the room to find the current chip leaders for this 5th of 7 live starting flights.

It wasn’t hard at all to find the chip leader – it’s Christine Do, who is already playing a remarkable stack of 210,000 tournament chips. It’s a stack size that really sticks out at this early stage in the tournament! After just 4 levels of play, Christine already has the equivalent of 7 starting stacks and is 49K ahead of the current overall chip average!