Day 1a of the Main Event wrapped up in dramatic fashion as a pair of knockouts on one table and another elimination across the room cut the field from 21 to 18 players in a single hand. While 19 were expected to bag, the abrupt ending left just 18 moving on to Day 2 from the opening flight.
At the top of the leaderboard is Matthew Ouellette, who quietly accumulated a towering stack of 737,000, giving him nearly a 100K cushion over second-place Cameron Stewart. Stewart also had an excellent day on the felt, finishing just shy of 650,000.
A big story late in the day was DJ Sharma, who managed a pivotal double-up after finding an ace on the river. That hand propelled him from the low 300s to 494,000, good for third overall. Sharma was still hovering above 200,000 late in the session but managed to pick up steam when it counted.
Rounding out the top five stacks are Ben Grenier, who already posted a deep run earlier this week with a fourth-place finish in the 6-Max, and the ever-consistent Brett Worton, a familiar face in the Seniors events who’s known for his deep runs across various formats.
| Player | Chip Count |
|---|---|
| Matthew Ouellette | 737,000 |
| Cameron Stewart | 649,500 |
| DJ Sharma | 494,000 |
| Ben Grenier | 486,000 |
| Brett Worton | 419,000 |
| Raul Cruz | 303,000 |
| Daniel Lefebvre | 256,000 |
| Todd Cochrane | 229,000 |
| Jeff Clarke | 148,500 |
| Brayden Brown | 146,000 |
| Varan Sidhu | 138,000 |
| Scott Munro | 118,000 |
| Kris Huntley | 107,000 |
| Chad Hallett | 104,500 |
| Colten Yamagishi | 77,500 |
| Aman Dhaliwal | 43,500 |
| Igor Gorelik | 25,500 |
| Rob Lothian | 23,000 |
Day 1a concluded just before the end of Level 15 with no need for hand-for-hand play thanks to the rapid-fire bustouts at the end. All 18 players who survived will return for Day 2 with solid stacks and momentum, especially the trio of Ouellette, Stewart, and Sharma, who have already separated themselves from the pack.
Day 1a Action
The opening flight to the Main Event started strong and just continued to build, generating the best Day 1a for a Main Event on the PPT in almost a year. By the time they got to the first break of the day, the prizes were already over $55k and growing.
The field cracked 100 before the second break. As they moved toward the end of entries, some of the eventual big stacks were starting to make waves. Cameron Stewart was sitting on the second stack, and he maintained that solid position through the night, ranking as one of the stacks to note at every chip update. Rob Lothian also had a great stack in the midgame, but he ran into some late-day variance to bag the short stack from the day.
Meanwhile, leader Matthew Ouellette was slowly climbing up the ranks, as was DJ Sharma, but, in his case, not nearly so quietly. In the end, they played for around 12 hours before the bags came out to end the day just before the end of Level 15.
