Day 1B has come to a close at the partypoker.net World Poker Tour Montreal Main Event at the Playground Poker Club in the province of Quebec, Canada. There were an additional 209 entrants today, and that took the overall field size up to 342. There were 87 players that advanced to Day 2 and they will join the 45 survivors from Day 1A.
The chip leader at the end of play tonight is Mike Leah (pictured above) with 297,000. He was also the chip leader at the dinner break tonight, so Leah was awarded two pairs of Monster DNA headphones tonight as part of a promotion from partypoker. Other top stacks were bagged up by Alim Perales (189,000), Sheraz Nasir (179,900), Jonathan Jaffe (173,000), and Mark Darner (162,700). Familiar faces that advanced were Todd Terry, Christian Harder, David Williams, Dan Smith, Chris Bell, Brandon Steven, Andy Frankenberger, Jeff Madsen, Micah Raskin, Mike Mcdonald, and Jason Mercier.
Notables that did not survive the day include Will Failla, Eric Afriat, Anthony Zinno, Cornel Cimpan, Danny Suied, Curt Kohlberg, Paul Klann, Marc-Andre Ladouceur, Dan Kelly, Chanracy Khun, Sylvain Siebert, and Antonio Esfandiari. They will all have one final shot to take tomorrow if they so choose.
The final starting flight of the tournament will begin on Saturday at 11 a.m. You can follow along with the big hands, chip counts, photos, and videos from the WPT Live Updates team all day on Day 1C. We will have a full picture of the field size and prize pool when registration closes at the end of Level 6 tomorrow. Until then, goodnight from the wonderful Playground Poker Club in Montreal.