Francois Goulet, who has reached two final tables in 2018, in events at Binion’s and the Venetian in Las Vegas, just hit a set of tens.  Preflop, Goulet raised to 600 and both Francois Billard and David Ormsby called. Tony Guglietti then raised 2,200. Both Goulet and Ormsby called and Billard folded.

When the flop came down Tony bet 3,000. Francois called and David folded.

The dealer flipped the turn: . Tony checked and Francois bet 3,500. Tony pondered for a while, but made the call. The river was the and Tony bet 6,000. Without delay, Francois went all in, pushing all his 26,000 chips forward. Tony debated with himself for more than a minute before calling.  But Tony’s hand – – was no match for the pair of tens Francois was holding, which gave him the set.

We are now in level 4, with less than an hour to go before the 45-minute lunch break. However, just prior to the start of level 4, notable player Maxime Heroux almost saw his day end early, as he found himself all in against Jeffrey Cormier.

When we joined the hand the board was showing , and Maxime had shoved for his remaining stack, approximately 35,000. His opponent thought about it carefully, but ultimately decided to opt for caution, not wanting to cripple himself if he guessed wrong.

Jeffrey ended up folding, and Maxime won the pile of chips, totaling about 60,000. He immediately stood up from the table to stretch his legs and perhaps calm his nerves as well.

The WPT Main Event draws all kinds of players, both amateurs and pros, and everyone has a chance to make it big. Some names are bigger than others however, and table 23 happens to have a few all concentrated together.

Maxime Heroux is one of those players. He won the 2017 $3200 + $300 No Limit WPT Main Event, and also made the final table three additional times over the last two years at various events. He will be one to watch for moving forward.

Also at the table is Ari Engel, currently 12th on the Canada All Time Money List, and with more than twenty five 1st place finishes over the last decade, he a grinder legend that should never be underestimated.

Finally we have Alexandre Lavigne. He final tabled two events back to back right here at Playground Poker Club in the summer of 2014, and he hasn’t slowed down since, finishing in 2nd just two months ago in the $1000 + $100 No Limit Hold’em Bounty event.

Good luck to all the players, and perhaps even more to their opponents.

Although 114 players have already joined us today at the WPT Main Event Day 1B, the average stack remains very close to the starting stack of 40,000. Only one player who has managed to get out ahead of the rest, Mr. Jason Mangold. He is the current chip leader with exactly 100,000 in chips. The only other players even close are Louis Boutin with 89,000 and Edward Arnold with 82,200.

Preflop, Piotr Siwiec raised to 700, and Long Hoang Nguyen followed with a raise to 2,100. Adel Mansour then raised to 5,000, and when the betting returned to Piotr he went all in. Long paused and then proceed to push his entire stack into the pot. Adel shrugged and did the same.

Piotr:
Long:
Adel:

On the flop, the dealer flipped . Adel stood up as the dealer revealed the turn , and then he began to walk away as the river card was dealt: . Piotr shook his head and Long took the hand with Kings and sixes.

We joined the hand with the board showing .

Duhamel checked utg, prompting a bet of 2500 from Marc MacDonnell, a bet about the size of the pot. Duhamel was in no mood to be pressured out of the hand though, and four-bet his opponent with a 10,000 check-raise.

Whether it was his cards or Duhamel’s reputation is anyone’s guess, but MacDonnell folded without a second thought.