The timer has just sounded to indicate the start of the fifteenth level of play on Day 1E, with 37 players left in contention.

The top 24 will reach the money and advance their stacks to Day 2, so it comes as no surprise that the pace of play has slowed significantly. The players are still enjoying relatively deep play, as an average stack provides slightly more than 34 big blinds. But the tension is mounting nonetheless.

Jean-Pascal Gauthier has used his flight-leading stack to his advantage and has chipped up since the last break. Gauthier is, for the time being, the only player in the field with more than one million in chips. Michel Pouliot has quietly built himself an imposing stack of roughly 900,000 in chips. Sinisa Stajic also has a stack in the neighbourhood of 900k, putting him in a dead heat for second place with Pouliot. Former chip leader Claude Perrault still has an above-average stack, but he has been surpassed by many in the field.