We have just now come back from our fourth break of the evening and are entering the second-to-last level of today’s WPTDeepStacks $1500 + $150 tournament. We took the opportunity to do a brief count during the break, and it appears that Mathyeu Provost has taken the lead.

He sits atop the leaderboard with 1,388,000 chips, just more than his closest two rivals Muhammad Abdel-Rahim and David Quang. A more comprehensive list is below.

At table 27 Tony Tran won a relatively nice pot just now, pushing out his competitors with some aggressive play, and also relying on the pressure from the time clock.

Tony opened with a raise of 23,000, which was called by Steven Martin, Michael Ferrer and Christopher Rivard. 100,000+ chips were in the pot already.

Flop:

After two checks by Michael and Christopher, Tony opened again with a bet of 38,000. He was called by Steven, and the other two folded. The turn was a .

With three hearts on the board, Tony now raised to 78,000, about half the size of the pot. After a long wait (and the use of one or two of his 30 second time chits, Steven was forced to fold. Tony was a gentleman about it, however, and showed his . “What can I do? I didn’t have the hearts!” said Steve.

As we arrived at table 22, the all in was already in progress. In the heads up battle were Mohammed Alemelhuda and Giancarlo Palleschi. Giancarlo was holding the pocket , and Mohammed had an .

The board came down , and Mohammed was already out of his seat putting his coat on. The last two cards didn’t help (we missed them), and Mohammed’s night was over. He still took home $4,000 for his trouble, finishing in 60th place.

As we find ourselves fresh into level 20 (the eighth of ten 60-minute levels), there remain only 64 players at the tables vying for the $1,000,000+ prize pool. Here are some photos of the warriors that have lasted this far.

After the devastating blow to his chip stack very early in the day, the odds were that Trevor Argue would be bowing out of the WPTDeepStacks tournament early. However, that was not the case!

Trevor has battled back after losing 90% of his 300,000 chips, and his success is due in part to the fact that he (allegedly) shoved all in up to 25 times today. While there is no way to verify the exact number, the odds are that it is true, given the fact that he shoved twice on the bubble, a time in which the vast majority of players opt to do nothing but fold until the danger passes.

There is no telling where Trevor will end up at the end of the day, but if he keeps up his solid play, he could very well go deep in this event. Either way, he’s in the money, and that is a win all in itself.

After six levels and three breaks, we have a new chip leader: Muhammad Abdel-Rahim, with 912,000 chips. At this point there are only 75 players left, and based on the speed at which the blinds keep rising, we expect to be down to less than 40 by the end of the night. The top five chip leaders are below, all at 650,000 or above.

To all those still at the tables, keep it up! You’re almost there!