Mike Sexton looks to defend his WPT title in Montreal starting on November 10

It was roughly one year ago when poker legend and former World Poker Tour commentator Mike Sexton bested the field of 648 players at the Playground Poker Club in Montreal to win the partypoker.net WPT Montreal Main Event for over $317,000 US and his first WPT title.

On Friday, November 10, the WPT is set to return to the scene of last year’s historic tournament for the sixth WPT Montreal at the beloved Playground Poker Club. The five-day $3,850 CAD Main Event features a $2,000,000 CAD (over $1.5 million US) guarantee and will be both filmed for television as well as live streamed around the world.

The Montreal stop has been a staple of the WPT since its initial appearance on the schedule back in Season XI. The tournament was the first time a WPT Main Event was held on Canadian soil since 2008 and in a gripping conclusion, Canadian Jonathan Roy bested countryman Pascal Lefrancois to take home the inaugural WPT Montreal title and a career-high cash of $779,210 USD. Joining Roy, popular pros Jeff Gross and Gavin Smith made appearances at the 2012 final table.

In fact, WPT Montreal has a healthy history of final tables full of poker’s brightest minds. The year after Roy’s victory saw, Lily Kiletto and Mukul Pahuja, who won the WPT Season XII Player of the Year that year, playing for the title. Pahuja final tabled the same event the very next year, joining Main Event mainstay Kevin McPhee and, the eventual winner of WPT Montreal in Season XIII, Jonathan Jaffee. Season XIV’s Final Table featured the first player not hailing from Canada or the U.S. when German phenom Rainer Kempe finished in third. Then, again, just last year, Sexton’s victory was over hometown favorite, Canadian Benny Chen, perhaps best known as the gold bracelet winner in the WSOP’s inaugural 2013 Millionaire Maker.

WPT Montreal’s frenzy of action begins with three Day 1’s, November 10-12, with re-entries being allowed on subsequent days. Players have the ability to fire secondary and tertiary bullets in additional Day 1s even if they survived their first with the largest surviving chip stack of any day moving forward to Day 2.

There is plenty of opportunity for players to show up early and satellite into the Main Event as well. On November 9, Playground Poker Club is offering three different mega-satellites. This includes a massive 20-seat guaranteed tournament for $385 + $35 CAD at 8:00pm local time. As the Main Event begins, there are additional times to win your way in on both Day 1a and Day 1b. In total, 50 seats will be guaranteed to go to live qualifiers.

There’s little question of if WPT Montreal will be big – but how big will it be in Season XVI? Certainly, there will be plenty of notable names in the field vying for the massive guarantee. One player to keep an eye on that has confirmed his attendance is current WPT Player of the Year points leader Art Papazyan. Papazyan has a huge lead in the POY race after winning a pair of WPT events this season, but if he wants to keep those who would usurp his claim to the WPT POY crown he needs to keep on cashing.

Joining Papazyan will be the reigning, defending WPT Montreal champion himself, Mike Sexton.

The WPT Montreal Main Event kicks off on November 10 and plays to a final table of six players which will be live streamed on November 16.