The World Poker Tour (WPT) brought its Prime Tour to Montreal for the first time and 1,291 entries turned out to Playground Poker Club to welcome the award-winning tour to one of poker's hot spots.
The final six players will reconvene on Tuesday to play down to a winner on the WPT's televised final table, and they'll split up the rest of the prize pool of C$1,281,000 (~US$943,721), from which C$139,840 (~US $102,691) will go to the winner.
WPT Prime was founded after the industry emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic, and it has since grown to 12 countries across four different continents. The tour capped off the 2023 run with over 10,000 entries and a $1.3 million top prize at the WPT Prime Championship in December at the Wynn.
"One of the things that we are committed to is to bring poker to people around the world, including those new and underserved markets," Global Tour Management Senior Director Cathy Zhao said while accepting the award for Best Mid-Major Tour at the 2024 Global Poker Index Awards. "We are bringing people together and creating new opportunities for fans."
In its first trip to Montreal, the tour banked on a loyal local following for WPT, built since the Main Tour's first stop in 2012. Several renovations over that time have allowed the club and the tour to grow alongside one another, and both are in a great position to capitalize on the overall growth of the live poker scene.
Prime time for Brad Owen
Still in play to become Montreal's inaugural Prime Champion is WPT Global Ambassador Brad Owen, who has shown great results on the live poker scene over the last year. Owen finished fourth in the WPT Gardens event at a live final table last May before a seventh-place finish at the WPT $50K Alpha 8 led to the biggest live score of his career at December's World Championship.
Owen enters the final day in second on the leaderboard behind Dan Stavila, the only other runner over 100 big blinds at the six-player final table. Stavila was very active at the end of the night — and he would have finished with more — but he was caught speeding by Adam Cader's pocket aces in the closing stages. Cader, a regular cashing finisher here at Playground, used the hand to get off the short stack and bag 56 big blinds. Cader is trailed on the leaderboard by Ottawa's Marc Lavergne and Steven Marin of Philadelphia — the short stack with just 16 big blinds.
A star is born (very recently)
The 18-year-old Marin is playing in his second-ever poker series and has the opportunity to become the youngest winner in televised WPT final table history. He has already shown the ability to close the deal in Florida where he took down two separate 5-Card PLO events at WPT Seminole Hard Rock Poker Showdown. Marin's $33K in winnings are almost entirely comprised of those two WPT side events in April.
In the middle of the pack is China's Jikai Zhang, another beneficiary of the late action from Stavila. A showdown with pocket queens against the chip leader and some timely three-betting led to a healthy 84 big blinds for the final day.
The final six players will take a couple of days off before they return on Tuesday to play down to a winner at the televised WPT final table.
Photos courtesy of World Poker Tour/Miguel Cortes and Enrique Malfavon
