The three opening flights are history at the WPT Montreal Main Event and 853 entries turned out to Playground Poker Club for their shot at a prize pool that is climbing over C$2.8 million.
Registration was still open through the beginning of Day 2, and 29 more players sat down on Sunday morning to bring the total entries to 882.
On Saturday, Day 1C welcomed 448 entries, from which 176 players advanced to Day 2. At the top of the list is Graham Lupton, who bagged just under 500K to lead the way. He's joined for Day 2 by several notable players who played Saturday's bumper flight, including Tony Dunst, Fred Normand, Joel Deutsch, Jamie Staples, and Brad Owen.
Dunst, already a member of the Champions Club with a win in St. Maarten in 2013, is a WPT lifer and two-time bracelet winner with over $4 million in lifetime earnings. He's looking for another deep Main Event run after a 14th-place finish at January's Cambodia stop.
Normand, a recent addition to the Champions Club, won the bestbet Jacksonville stop last season and followed it up with another six-figure payday in a $1,500 event at the WPT World Championship in December. Another recent champion, Deutsch, is fresh off of a victory in the Borgata Spring Poker Open Championship last week in Atlantic City.
Staples and Owen, two of the more recognizable faces from the poker content game, are still in play for WPT glory. Owen — a WPT Global Ambassador — has already qualified for a final table this week and he will return on Tuesday for a shot at winning the WPT Prime Montreal Championship. Another deep run would set him up for back-to-back final tables on Tuesday and Wednesday. Staples, a popular poker streamer and vlogger, will make a go at adding to his live resume while he takes a break from Montreal's online grind.
Saturday's survivors joined 91 players from Day 1B and another 36 runners from Day 1A. They'll pair with today's late entries to play a planned 10 levels on Day 2. The tournament will click over to 90-minute levels once 40 players remain, and Day 2 survivors will return on Monday at 11am to play down to a televised final table that will be taped on Wednesday.
Photos courtesy of World Poker Tour/Enrique Malfavon
