Landriault Holds a Massive Lead After Day 3 of the CA$10,000 Main Event
Play has come to an end in the CA$10,000 Main Event at the 2019 partypoker MILLIONS LIVE North America. It took less than six levels to bring the field down to 16 players and the tournament director decided to bag up the chips early with only two tables remaining.
Leading the pack when the action resumes on Day 4 will be Danick Landriault from Hawkesbury, Ontario. Landriault went on a tear after the dinner break and it all started from a failed bluff attempt from Bryn Kenney. Not long after, Landriault flopped a full house against Philipe Pizzari Pinto's pocket queens and raked in nearly a 70 million chip pot. To finish the day, Landriault eliminated last year's third-place finisher Tony Ruberto in 19th place as he bagged up 97,200,000, nearly one-fifth of the total chips in play.
After play concluded, Landriault mentioned that he doesn't play a lot of live tournaments and mostly focuses on cash games and a little bit of online play. Landriault is a regular at the Playground Poker Club and won his way into the Main Event via one of the satellites. With the final tablists guaranteed a six-figure payday, Landriault could find himself a new career at the felt.
The next closest stack to Landriault belongs to Kevin Rabichow with 45,475,000. Rabichow was the Day 2 chipleader but he remained fairly quiet on Day 3 which turned out to be all he needed to do. The sole remaining partypoker pro Joni Jouhkimainen also bagged a healthy stack with 44,750,000 and John Cayley was the only other player over 40 million chips with 44,525,000.
Day 3 kicked off with 66 players returning to the felt, only three eliminations away from the money. The action was slow to start until just over halfway through the first level when the money bubble burst. Cedrick Angove-Bernier found himself all in for 2,750,000 and thought he would be in great shape to double up with pocket kings, but unfortunately, he ran into the pocket aces of Olivier Rebello-Frechette.
The bustouts came fast and furious afterward which saw the likes of Sergio Aido, Tom Hall, Manig Loeser, Philippe D'Auteuil, Marc-Andre Ladouceur, Griffin Benger, and Sam Grafton all hit the rail. Only 26 players returned from dinner break and when Orpen Kisacikoglu and Maurice Hawkins exited the tournament, they were down to just three tables.
Mike McDonald, who once held a spot atop the leaderboard, was one player everyone wanted to keep their eye on. He was moved away from the feature table and his short stack didn't last much longer. McDonald's ace-high was no match for Erik Lemarquand's pocket nines and "Timex" finished in 22nd place. Former GPI #1 ranked player Bryn Kenney was looking to add another title to his collection but his four-bet jam with king-queen sent him home in 18th place just before the day wrapped up.
The action will get back underway at 12 p.m. EST tomorrow and the schedule is to play down to the final six players. There will be 9:36 remaining in level 26 with the blinds at 200,000/400,000 and a 400,000 big blind ante. At the start of level 29, the blinds will be increased to 90 minutes in length. Each player is now guaranteed to walk away with at least CA$40,000 but they will all have their sights set on the first-place prize of CA$1,000,000.
The PokerNews live reporting team will be back to bring you all of the live updates throughout the entire event so keep it locked here.