After 10 hours of poker action, the final full-sized Day 1 event has come to a close. This was the largest Day 1 of the tournament so far, with a crowd of 585 joining us today at noon. Of those, only 83 remain.

The average chips stack is 688,000, which is on par with the rest of the Day 1s. However, the chip leader today, Richard Shamshoum, is our largest chip leader to date. With well over 3,000,000 chips in front of him, he can start tomorrow’s Day 2 with the most leverage and the most breathing room. Congratulations!

The chip counts of all our leaders will be finalized a little later tonight, so we’ll be sure to share them in a link as soon as they are available.

Click here to consult the Combined Day 1 Results List

At table 56 just now Julien Lemay had shoved preflop. With only 10 minutes left on the day, he needed more chips. He had only just over 200,000 on the board.

The other two players in the hand, Ben Goffman and Denis Theriault, had a decision to make. Ben tanked for a while, really thinking hard. So hard in fact that another player at the table, one with very few chips (and who wanted to see a few more hands) called time on him, and badgered him a little while he was thinking. Ben didn’t appreciate it, but in the end he decided to fold. It was probably a good thing.

Denis called and showed his . Julien had .

The board was dealt , and Julien celebrated silently, pumping his fist and glowing with his last-minute win. He may not be a chip leader going into tomorrow’s Day 2, but he’s certainly in a stronger place than he was 20 minutes ago. Well done!

Sometimes having the chip leader at your table is a curse, other times it’s a blessing. In the case of Garry Jansen, this latest hand was a case of the latter.

It began with a raise from late position by one of our chip leaders Josh Kimmel. He opened with a 42,000 raise, and the only one to stay was the big blind Garry Jansen.

Flop:

Josh bet 53,000 this time, an Garry wasn’t deterred, although cracks were showing, as he thought about it for a while. A came down on the turn. It was to be a decisive call.

This time Josh fired 125,000. Garry, looking at his chip stack, realized that if he were to call here, he was basically pot committed. He couldn’t have had more than 60,000 or 70,000 left, but instead of shoving, he only called.

This sort of play might have been a huge warning sign to Josh in a hand in which his opponent had more chips, but with only a small amount left for Gary to bet on the river it didn’t matter.

Whatever signs there had been to read were long past. With resignation, Josh called Garry’s inevitable all in river shove. He saw what he was dreading: two clubs in his opponents’ hand.

Garry’s was too much for Josh’s suited . In retrospect, Garry’s strongest play was the 53,000 call to see the turn. And although chasing a flush is a loser of a long-term strategy, it’s called gambling for a reason! Garry took the risk, and he reaped the reward.

It’s not all tears for Josh, however. His large stack allows him to lose a quarter million chips in a hand and still finish strong.

Richard Shamshoum has rocketed into the lead, accumulating an incredible 3,477,000 chips, well above all the leaders in all of the previous 15 Day 1s to date in this Grand Prix Canada event.

And the day is not yet over!

That is not to say that the other chip leaders (listed below) are not also doing a fantastic job. They are. And it almost goes without saying: with an hour left to play, the blinds up at 7,000/14,000 and a total of 58,500,000 chips in play, it’s anyone’s game.

Good luck to all as we finish off the night.

First Name | Prénom	Name | Nom	Stack | Tapis
Richard	Shamshoum	3,477,000
Josh	Kimmel	1,652,000
Robert	Leboeuf	1,325,000
Angelo	Gonzoles	1,060,000

Every time we walked past table 62 over the last 90 minutes, it seemed that Brian Hart-Webster was on his last legs, only holding a few chips in front of him. His neighbor to the left insisted that we take a picture of him and “Prince Harry”, but we declined, saying that we saved the blog posts for actual poker.

Lucky for us, Brian caught a hand just as we were passing by again recently, and so everyone gets their wish!

When we arrived, Brian had shoved for 69,000, his last chips. One player at the table, Alex Guerrera, decided to call. The board was dealt , and Alex’s couldn’t beat Brian. We were so happy for him that we didn’t even noticed what he had.

Suffice it to say that he had the winning hand, it it made him a happy man, as evidenced below. Keep it up, and say hi to the Duchess of Sussex for us!

As we hovered over table 64, we noticed two players raising and re-raising each other good naturedly, and so we looked a little closer.

David Beer, dubbed the Sicilian Orange by one of his tablemates Said Michailidis as an inside joke, started things off from early position with a raise to 16,000. Directly to his left, Habib Rachidi Alaoui re-raised him to 33,000.

Not to be outdone, the Orange re-raised again, this time to 108,000. Now we had a showdown!

The players joked back and forth a bit, but ultimately Habib didn’t want to mess around. Perhaps he had seen The Princess Bride and learned one of its most important lessons: never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line!

In the end Habib folded, and they all lived to play another day.

We just lost club regular Frederic Normand, as he was eliminated about 20 minutes ago from the noon flight of the $200 + $20 Grand Prix Canada. But while his Day 1I dreams are over, he’s not done yet!

Fresh off of his loss he decided to try again, registering for the 5PM flight, Day 1J. In our opinion, Fred is dressed for success because surviving these long days at the table requires not only skill and passion, but sometimes above all it requires comfort!

His comfortable bathrobe may be just the edge he needs to last until 3AM. Good luck!

With the blinds at 3,500/7,000, the hand started out normally enough.

Amed Pacho Sierra opened with a late-position three-bet raise to 21,000. To his left, Neil Miller called without hesitation. But to his  left was Telfae Gray. She shoved overtop for her stack quickly as well, and after a brief count the dealer determined it was 182,500.

This was too rich for the blood of everyone at the table, even Amed and Neil. But, ever the gentlewoman, Telfae courteously showed her two opponents the pocket pair of nines she was holding. She was heard to say “I’m only showing you because you showed me yours earlier.”

We can only assume she was talking about cards.