Upeshka De Silva Takes The Lead Out of Day 1b; 89 of 172 Entries Advance
Oct 30, 2018
Day 1b of WPT Montreal brought in 172 entries and leading the 89 players who bagged chips is Season IV WPTDeepStacks champion and WPT final tablist Upeshka De Silva. The WPTDeepStacks Oceanside winner bagged 249,000 and is only a few thousand behind Day 1a leader Marius Kikinezhdi. Over the course of the eight 60-minute levels played, the total field size crept up to 266 runners, setting up for a gigantic Day 1c. So far, 138 players have a ticket punched for Day 2.
De Silva had his Day 1b start off in the perfect way. In one of the first levels of the day, De Silva held with pocket aces against the 
of David Guay on a 
board to chip up to 160,000 right away. From there, De Silva cruised to the finish line and has over 300 big blinds to work with when Day 2 starts on Thursday.
Just behind De Silva are WPT Champions Club members Matt Salsberg (237,200) and Season XVI WPT Montreal winner Maxime Heroux (198,400). Heroux’s (pictured) title defense is off to a great start but there are still quite a few days of poker left before he can step in the winner’s circle for the second time.
Zach Donovan, Joseph Cheong, Marc Macdonnell, Sam Chartier, Jared Griener, and Darren Elias are also on to Day 2. A full list of chip counts can be found here.
Some of the players to bust on Day 1b included Kelly Minkin, Mike Leah, Alex Rocha, and WPT bestbet Bounty Scramble winner Tony Tran. All of those players have the opportunity to re-enter tomorrow on Day 1c or until Level 11 on Day 2.
Day 1c kicks off at 12:00 pm ET with hundreds upon hundreds expected with the CAD $5 million guarantee looming over the field at Playground Poker Club.
Stay tuned to WPT.com for continued coverage of WPT Montreal.
Photography by Tomas Stacha
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