Full Tilt Poker – The Full Tilt Poker Montreal Festival has succeeded to the hilt. After a mouth-watering 1,625 entries, a Playground Poker Club record, only the champion, Henri Balcazar of Kitchener, Ontario remained, holding an oversized cheque written out to the amount of $194,044.
Seven days of poker has been witness to countless unbelievable plays, stacks amassing as if in a fast-forward time-lapse, only to blow away, dust in the wind.
The big names came out, and fell, one by one. From Gus Hansen to Gavin Smith, Tom Dwan to Martins Adeniya, Antonio Esfandiari to Dermot Blain, Sin Melin to Victor Ramdin, everyone with a sparkling resume fell short of today’s final table.
The first man out today was Colin Piche, who moved all-in with black eights only for Mike Linster to wake up with red jacks behind him. He went home with $27,269.
Next was the shortest stack, Zeng Yi-Xie, earning $35,150. He made a standard shove with ace-three suited in middle position with less than thirteen big blinds. Eric Despres called in the big blind with a dominating ace-queen, flopped a queen to Yi-Xie’s flush draw and dodged spades to clinch the knockout.
