By Alex Drummond, Editor-in-Chief · September 9, 2026 · Fact-checked by Maya Chen
KAHNAWAKE, QC - Paul Klann, the 41-year-old disaster-restoration business owner from Richmond, British Columbia whose only previous major poker title was the 2013 WPT L.A. Poker Classic thirteen years ago, has taken the Day 5 chip lead at the WSOP Super Circuit Canada CA$5,000 Main Event at Playground Poker Club in Kahnawake, according to Calum Grant’s Day 5 preview for PokerNews. Klann bagged 11,300,000 chips and 113 big blinds when play ended on Tuesday, ahead of Canadian Guoyan Li in second on 8,100,000 and Nicholas Palma of the United States in third on 7,600,000. The field of 116 players who came back on Tuesday morning was cut to 30 across the day, and 22 of those 30 survivors are Canadian, a striking overrepresentation given the tournament’s international field. Day 5 fires Wednesday, September 9 at 11 a.m. local time. The tournament’s scheduled six additional levels of play should end with the official final table set for Thursday’s conclusion.
Klann’s chip lead is one of the more unusual leaderboards to emerge from a WSOP-branded Main Event in Canada. According to The Hendon Mob, Klann carries US$1,167,156 in recorded live tournament earnings and just US$22,018 in earnings outside of one tournament: his February 2013 WPT L.A. Poker Classic Main Event victory in the Commerce Casino ballroom, where he topped a 517-entry field to collect US$1,004,090, was catapulted into second place in that year’s Card Player Player of the Year race, and, per contemporary reporting by Card Player, was described as an amateur player with five years of experience running a disaster-restoration company. He has not made a major final table in the thirteen years since. Now he sits with a chip-lead cushion over the closest challenger equivalent to 32 big blinds and every incentive to play the medium-stack chip advantage cleanly against a field of predominantly Canadian mid-stakes players.
The Day 4 Attrition
Day 4 opened with 116 bagged stacks and finished with 30 for Day 5, an eliminations count of 86 spread across the money-bubble burst, in-the-money-only period, and the balance of the day’s five 60-minute levels. The money bubble was not itemised in the Day 4 recap, but every player returning on Wednesday morning is now guaranteed CA$51,000, with pay-jump ladders rising to CA$65,000 at 26th, CA$85,357 at 17th, CA$100,000 at 13th, CA$120,000 at 11th, and the CA$150,000 to CA$1,500,000 final-table ladder from ninth up to the champion. The final four players are each guaranteed CA$600,000 or more, the final three each guaranteed CA$750,000, and the runner-up will bank CA$1,000,000. The first-place prize of CA$1,500,000 is the largest single first-prize figure in the history of Canadian live poker.
The three most notable Day 4 eliminations were reported by PokerNews. Daniel Negreanu, the Toronto-born Poker Hall of Fame inductee and the game’s most recognisable Canadian player, was busted by Chance Kornuth in a hand in which Kornuth called the river card he needed to send Negreanu to the rail and finished Day 4 sixth in chips on 6,600,000. Michael “Grinder” Mizrachi, the reigning 2025 WSOP world champion and six-time bracelet holder who ended Day 3 in 28th on 60 big blinds, went out among the early Day 4 exits before the money bubble. Rami Hammoud, the Canadian who finished sixth at the 2026 WSOP Main Event final table in Las Vegas in July, was eliminated during Day 4. The single biggest chip pot of the day, and the pot that lifted Klann from mid-stack to leader, was a river-call bluff-catch. American Will Givens, who bagged 4,000,000 for the Day 4 start in second place behind Rayan Chamas, fired what PokerNews described as a “huge bluff” into Klann’s nut flush and could not recover.
Rayan “Beriuzy” Chamas, the Lebanese-born and Quebec-resident Twitch streaming professional who took the overall chip lead on Day 3, bagged 4,500,000 on Tuesday and dropped to 15th in the chip counts. Chamas remains within striking distance of the final table at 45 big blinds but is no longer positioned as the tournament’s presumptive favourite. Vanessa Kade, the Canadian streamer who returned on Day 4 in 95th, is not listed among the final 30.
The Field
What stands out from the Day 5 chip counts is the sheer weight of the Canadian contingent. Canadian players hold 22 of the 30 seats, the two American seats (Nicholas Palma and Chance Kornuth) sit in the top six, Jack Salter and Jack Hardcastle carry the United Kingdom flag from ninth and 24th respectively, Ori Elul plays for Spain from 17th, Felipe Baraky and Gualter Fortuna hold Brazil from a two-way 20th, Tsunehisa Nishi is listed for Canada in 19th, Fabian Gumz for Austria in fourth, and Xiaoyao Ma for China in 28th. This is the top eight followed by the Canadian bloc:
| Rank | Player | Country | Chip Count | Big Blinds |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Paul Klann | Canada | 11,300,000 | 113 |
| 2 | Guoyan Li | Canada | 8,100,000 | 81 |
| 3 | Nicholas Palma | United States | 7,600,000 | 76 |
| 4 | Fabian Gumz | Austria | 6,800,000 | 68 |
| 5 | Aaron Quon | Canada | 6,800,000 | 68 |
| 6 | Chance Kornuth | United States | 6,600,000 | 66 |
| 7 | Jonathan Bussieres | Canada | 6,600,000 | 66 |
| 8 | Deven Lane | Canada | 6,300,000 | 63 |
| 9 | Jack Salter | United Kingdom | 5,700,000 | 56 |
| 10 | Franco Tucci | Canada | 5,500,000 | 55 |
Of the six Canadian names in the top ten, only Franco Tucci in tenth is a WSOP Circuit ring holder from prior stops at Playground. Tucci won the 2024 Colossus at the same venue for a career-record CA$116,000 that year and a fifth WSOP Circuit ring, and he now sits with 55 big blinds and a live shot at the tournament’s largest headline title. The rest of the Canadian top-ten — Klann, Li, Aaron Quon, Jonathan Bussieres, Deven Lane — are all mid-stakes and semi-professional players without a marquee title on their live rEsumEs.
The Remaining Pay Ladder
The pay ladder from 30th up through the champion is unusually top-heavy by Canadian live-poker standards. Every player returning Wednesday morning has already locked in CA$51,000, meaning the minimum outcome for a professional player who has been sitting for 60 hours of live play is a small career-record cash. From there:
| Finish | Prize (CAD) |
|---|---|
| 1st | CA$1,500,000 |
| 2nd | CA$1,000,000 |
| 3rd | CA$750,000 |
| 4th | CA$600,000 |
| 5th | CA$500,000 |
| 6th | CA$400,000 |
| 7th | CA$300,000 |
| 8th | CA$200,000 |
| 9th | CA$150,000 |
| 10th-11th | CA$120,000 |
| 12th-13th | CA$100,000 |
| 14th-17th | CA$85,357 |
| 18th-26th | CA$65,000 |
| 27th-30th | CA$51,000 |
The final four players each collect at least CA$600,000, the final three each at least CA$750,000, and the runner-up bags a straight CA$1,000,000. The gap between the CA$150,000 ninth-place prize and the CA$1,500,000 first-place prize is a factor of ten, one of the steeper final-table ladders on the Circuit calendar and a byproduct of the tournament’s uncapped Main Event guarantee blowing past its CA$10-million floor by 30.8 per cent.
The Ontario Angle
Klann is not an Ontario player — he lives in Richmond, British Columbia and has since well before his 2013 WPT LAPC breakthrough. But the surviving field is meaningfully Ontario-facing. Franco Tucci in tenth is a Playground regular who plays a heavy Ontario-online tournament schedule when he is not travelling to Circuit stops. Steve Petrusevski, Robert Renaud, Benjamin Veenstra, Adam Cader and Bradley Smith are all listed by WSOP.com under Canada with Ontario residency addresses. Chamas is a Quebec resident but streams his Ontario-legal online play from Byblos to a large Toronto and Ottawa audience on Twitch. And the tournament’s two American headline players still alive, Palma and Kornuth, are both livestreamed regulars in the Ontario audience for their content.
For Canadian recreational and professional players who watched Windsor’s James Pillon win Event #4 of this series for CA$335,000 to claim his second WSOPC ring, as we reported last week, the 22-of-30 Canadian count entering Day 5 raises the strong likelihood of a second consecutive Canadian Main Event champion at Playground in 2026, following Allen Shen’s CA$605,000 spring win at the same venue. The mathematics also favour a Canadian at the final table: at a top-nine cut with the current stack distribution, six or seven of the final nine are on statistical track to be Canadian.
What Happens Next
Day 5 fires at Playground Kahnawake at 11 a.m. Eastern on Wednesday, September 9. The remaining 30 players are scheduled to play six 60-minute levels, standard Circuit Main Event Day 5 pacing, which should conclude between 9 p.m. and 11 p.m. Eastern with the official final table of nine bagged for Thursday. The Main Event is scheduled to conclude on Thursday, September 10. The tournament is being livestreamed with hole cards on WSOP.com and the WSOP YouTube channel with 60-minute delay, and PokerNews, Poker.org, Canadianpoker.com and Pokerfuse are all running rolling written coverage through the day.
This publication will file a Day 5 recap Thursday morning with the final-table chip counts and pay-out preview, and a Main Event champion recap Friday morning once the CA$1.5-million title has been won.
Sources
- Calum Grant, “L.A. Poker Classic Champ Leads Final 30 of Record-Breaking WSOP Circuit Main Event,” PokerNews, September 9, 2026 - pokernews.com/news/2026/09/palma-kornuth-salter-wsop-super-circuit-main-event-52342.htm
- WSOP Super Circuit Canada schedule and prize-pool listings, WSOP.com - wsop.com/tournaments/wsop-super-circuit-canada
- Paul Klann career-earnings profile, The Hendon Mob - pokerdb.thehendonmob.com/player.php?a=r&n=168982
- “Paul Klann Wins 2013 World Poker Tour L.A. Poker Classic,” PokerNews, March 1, 2013 - pokernews.com/news/2013/03/paul-klann-wins-2013-world-poker-tour-l-a-poker-classic-for-14420.htm
- Spadepoker Day 4 preview and final-table pay ladder - spadepoker.com/en/tv/stream-wsop-super-circuit-canada-main-event-5k-day-4
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