The World Series of Poker Europe Main Event may be the focus of the poker world at the moment, but let’s not forget that there is a major World Poker Tour event going on right now, too. The WPT Montreal Main Event saw the second of three starting flights contested on Tuesday; 172 players entered and/or re-entered, bringing the total number of entries so far to 266. Upeshka De Silva was the chip leader after Day 1B, finishing with 249,000 chips. Marius Kikinezhdi is the still the overall chip leader with 283,500 chips.
As discussed yesterday, the World Poker Tour and the Playground Poker Club were extremely ambitious with this tournament, setting a CAD $5 million guaranteed prize pool for an event with a buy-in of CAD $5,000 + $300, where CAD $4,850 is going to the prize pool. If I counted all my fingers and toes properly, that means 1,031 entries are needed to hit that prize pool and stay away from an overly (ooh, that rhymes). With just 266 entries after two of the three starting flights, it is going to take a quite the mass of bodies on Day 1C and Day 2 to hit that mark. In previous years, with a lower buy-in, the WPT Montreal Main Event has only eclipsed the 1,000 entry mark once, in its first year.
This is a single re-entry tournament, so everyone will still be allowed to both enter and re-enter the event on Wednesday’s Day 1C and on Day 2, up until the late registration period ends.
Upeshka De Silva built up more than half of his stack by Level 3, thanks to a huge hand against David Guay. On a flop of 9-4-9, Guay moved all-in and De Silva made the call. Guay had A-K for just the board’s pair of Nines with top two kickers as well as a club flush draw, while De Silva held pocket Aces. Guay needed to make the flush or hit runner-runner Kings to stay in the tournament. Neither of those things happened and De Silva jacked his stack up to 160,000 chips.
De Silva has made more than $2.1 million in his live tournament career, most recently winning a smallish high roller event at the Irish Poker Masters (to give an example of its size, “high roller” in this instance meant a €2,000 buy-in). He has never won a championship on the main WPT tour, but he did win the San Diego WPTDeepstacks Main Event a year ago. De Silva also has two World Series of Poker gold bracelets to his credit.
Day 1C is currently underway. As mentioned, registration is open until the beginning of Level 11 tomorrow.
2018 World Poker Tour Montreal Main Event – Day 1B Chip Leaders
1. Upeshka De Silva – 249,000
2. Matt Salsberg – 237,200
3. Steven Tripp – 227,600
4. Maxime Heroux – 198,400
5. Kevin Rivest – 192,100
6. Zachary Donovan – 190,400
7. Simon Despres-Bellavance – 160,800
8. Francois Billard – 160,400
9. Rodney Ramalho – 153,500
10. Francois Goulet – 150,000
2018 World Poker Tour Montreal Main Event – Overall Day 1 Chip Leaders
1. Marius Kikinezhdi – 283,500
2. Upeshka De Silva – 249,000
3. Matt Salsberg – 237,200
4. Steven Tripp – 227,600
5. Maxime Heroux – 198,400
6. Kevin Rivest – 192,100
7. Zachary Donovan – 190,400
8. Ljubomir Josipovic – 187,200
9. Srinivas Gottiparthi – 185,600
10. Shankar Pillai – 165,900
