LIVE EVENTS

Day 2 of the Grand Prix Canada has come to a close with the final 16 players bagging their chips to head into Day 2. Over the various Day 1 starting flights that attracted a total of 2,696 runners, Day 2 started off with 362 players who were all assured of a $400 min-cash. They played through 40-minute levels, all looking to make it to the final table where the there is $80,000 up top for the event champion. Action started off fast and furious as there were many short stacks who were all hoping for a badly needed double-up and one by one, players were sent to the cashier to collect their payouts while others were chipping up and building big stacks.

Danny Freitas took the early lead and maintained it through many levels of play, but ultimately fell short of the final 16 players. Local Abram Logasy then shot up into the stratosphere building a solid wall of chips, becoming the massive chip leader, with Kevin Javier right behind in second place. Francois Gauthier was also high on the leaderboard and at one point was in contention to take the lead.

Christopher Turnbull had a lot fun playing today and was sitting on an average stack and in the end of the evening, he picked up a huge triple-up to give him a really nice stack. While others were chipping up, Logasy ran into trouble and started to lose flip after flip, until, when it was all said and done, he ended up being eliminated on the bubble of the Day 3 qualifiers.

Perry Rouzes was under the radar for most of the day but in the later levels he found some great spots to get his chips in and in the end, he bagged the chip lead with a stack of 34,275,000

The top five stacks belong to:

1. Perry Rouzes, 34,275,000
2. Loic Duguay, 33,050,000
3. Alexandre Raymond, 31,575,000
4. Christopher Turnbull, 24,750,000
5. James Brown, 21,500,000

The players will return for Day 3 tomorrow at 6:00pm, and play down to a winner. The 16th place payout will be $2,500, and the top prize is $80,000 plus the championship ring along with the bragging rights.

Here are the 16 finalists:

With only 20 players still in contention and the blinds at 250,000/500,000, Nicolas Miron open shoved his stack of close to 5,000,000 chips. Christopher Turnbull was next to act and he re-shoved over top. The action then folded to Kevin Javier, who had the biggest stack in play. Javier spent a considerable amount of time in the tank trying to decide how to proceed until he finally moved a stack forward and announced that he was also all in. The blinds folded and the hands were tabled.

Miron:
Turnbull:
Javier:

Javier had the best hand but Turnbull had the over cards. The flop came and Javier stayed out in front. On the turn, nothing changed, however when the hit the river, Turnbull stood up in excitement, celebrating his huge triple-up. Turnbull had 9,000,000 chips and is now sitting on one of the top stacks in play.

Miron played a great game but unfortunately was eliminated in 19th place, collecting $2,100 for his two days of poker action.

On the next table over, we noticed that Abram Logasy has now lost a large portion of his stack and is no longer in the lead.

Day 2 is now in the final stretch as the tournament is down to the final 26 p,layers. Play will continue until only 16 players remain at which point players will bag their chips to return for Day 3 action tomorrow at 6:00pm.

Avi Logasy has been running hot for most of the afternoon and is sitting on a stack of 29,500,000 chips to lead the field. Kevin Javier is in second place with 22,300,000 chips.

Here are the leaders:

Some of the players still in contention include: Denis Ouellette, Albert Nguyen, Rong Xu, Brigitte Korak (the “last woman standing”), Nikolas Blanchette, Van Nghien Nguy, Luc Ratelle, Nicolas Miron, Yannick Belanger, just to name a few.

With only 36 players left in contention, Avi Logasy has built a massive wall of chips, a wall worth over 22 million! There are many other large stacks in play but no one is close to him at the moment. The current payout is at $1,600 and it will jump to $1,800 once there are only 32 players.

Here are some of the other players who are still alive and kicking in level 27:

The last two women standing (or sitting…):

There are now 60 players and the next pay jump takes place at 56 players ($1,200). The average stack is currently just under 4,500,000 and there is a new chip leader: Pierre-Luc Gaudreau is sitting on a stack of 12,750,000, equal to 80 big blinds. Steven Vinetti Huot, ther chip leader from yesterday’s Day 1M  is closing in on him, and all of the players with top stacks play a solid game, so it is still anybody’s tournament to win.

These are the top stacks in play from the last break:

The players just had their second break of the day and with an average chip stack sitting at 2,519,000 (31 Big Blinds), Danny Freitas is still in charge with the only stack north of 10 million, playing a stack of 10,015,000, good for 125 big blinds.

These are the big stacks in play:

With 109 players still fighting it out, the minimum payout is now $700. Rest assured, no one has their eyes on the min-cash amount; it’s the $80,000 up top that everyone wants!

Here are some of the players from level 22:

Logasy has been chipping up like crazy over the last hour:

Players have been dropping as the pay jumps are starting to become more interesting since only 125 runners remain in contention. In a classic battle of the blinds, on a board, Line St-Pierre moved all in from the small blind while heads-up against Manuel Fernandez in the big blind. Fernandez went deep into the tank before folding. He showed St-Pierre an ace as he folded. She then also showed Fernandez an ace. A battle of the blinds with both players still alive to see another hand.

The Grand Prix Canada is the marquee event of the 9-Year Anniversary Series and a long standing tradition here at Playground is to have an unbelievably amazing anniversary cake made by the “cake boss”, Fadi Haddad, owner of Wow-Cakes. If you are in the house today, please enjoy a piece of this scrumptious cake that has stunning details for sure (and, it tastes so good too!).

Wow, what a cake, made by Wow-Cakes!

The players have just come back from taking their first 20 minute break of the day and with the flurry of activity early on with the short stacks trying hard to secure badly needed double-ups, there are now plenty of large stacks throughout the room.

With an average stack sitting at 1,265,000 (32 big blinds), Danny Freitas has jumped to the top of the pack with 5,510,000 in chips, good for 138 big blinds.

Here are the top stacks in play: