After four exciting levels of play, the same player remains at the top of the leaderboard, a place he has occupied since the first few minutes of the tournament (when he became the first player of the day to double up). Congratulations to Upeshka De Silva for maintaining throughout the day so far!

And don’t forget, registration remains open throughout the day so you can come and join the action at any point at the WPT Main Event Day 1B.

At table 19, a recent hand started as a three-way battle between Bradley Smith, Edward Arnold and Schahin Ghiai. As we approached the table the board showed 7d, with Schahin utg.

Schahin checked, and Bradley bet 12,000, called by both Edward and Schahin. The turn was a .

Schahin checked again, and Bradley led out with a bet of 4,200. Edward casually tossed in a high denomination chip, indicating his call. Both players were raised by Schahin, as he made it 11,000 to go. This check-raise was too rich for Bradley’s blood, so when Edward called it was a showdown.

The river was dealt a , after which Schahin shoved all in utg for 35,000. This set up a long period of contemplation for Edward, in which he almost folded, then put his cards down, then stood up, then sat down, then talked out the hand to himself. In the end, he convinced himself that his opponent could only have two pair, Queens and 4s. Unfortunately for him, he was wrong.

Edward:

Schahin:

Schahin had made his straight, and Edward lost half of his stack, frustrated with himself for taking the risk.

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.