Jesse Johnston Leads the 71 Survivors on Day 1C of WPT500 Montreal

by Tim Duckworth

The second live day of WPT500 Montreal kicked off on Saturday from the Playground Poker Club as part of the Season XVII WPT Montreal festival that includes the three major components of the World Poker Tour’s offering – WPT500, WPTDeepStacks, and WPT Main Tour.

Day 1C of WPT500 Montreal saw a total of 400 entrants fill the tournament hall, and after 16 levels of tournament action, just 71 players would survive into Day 2 to join the 45 players that qualified for Day 2 action online on partypoker, along with the 45 from Day 1A and 31 from Day 1B. Leading today’s flight is Jesse Johnston who managed to bag an impressive 635,000.

Johnston has a short poker resume that consists of five cashes for nearly $45,000 in live tournament earnings. Although a cash hasn’t been recorded since 2014, Johnston is in prime position to make a run at changing that after he bagged a chip stack that is good for second place overall across the previous six flights.

Early in the day, Johnston began climbing the counts when he flopped the nut straight and Patrick Braga shoved into him. From there he slowly built on his chip stack and eventually was contending with the chip leaders. Following some power poker, Johnston immediately distanced himself from the pack as he put close to 300,000 between him and his nearest rival. Although experiencing a few hiccups late in the day, he eventually won the last few hands and held onto his Day 1C chip leader honors.

WPT Champions Club members Eric Afriat, Brian Altman, Victor Ramdin, and defending WPT Montreal Champion Maxime Heroux all fell throughout the day while the likes of Glenn Millar (488,000), Daniel Hughes (412,000), Tyler Carslaw (378,000), Jose Ivan Montes (377,000), and Matthew Wilkins (320,000), were the only players to cross the 300,000-chip threshold. The Day 1C survivors will all return for Day 2 action on Monday, October 29 at 3 p.m. (EDT).

Everyone eliminated throughout the course of the opening flights, or those looking to improve on their end-of-day chip count, will all have a chance to participate in Day 1D which is currently being played in the newly opened section of the tournament hall. Alternatively, they can take a seat in any of the subsequent flights over the next two days. Sunday will see two Day 1 flights on each day commencing at 12 p.m. (EDT), and 6 p.m. (EDT), while there will also be a turbo flight beginning on Monday, October 29, at 10 a.m. (EDT).

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On Sunday, Day 1E will commence at 12 p.m. (EDT), and Day 1F will commence at 6 p.m. (EDT). Players will begin with 30,000 in starting chips and play 16 30-minute levels before ending play for the flight. Late registration is open until the beginning of Level 11, and each player is allowed one re-entry.

Stay tuned right here to WPT.com for the exclusive live coverage of WPT500 Montreal, along with the other events of the WPT Montreal festival.

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