A 13-year-old WPT title is suddenly worth a second look. Paul Klann, who won the 2013 L.A. Poker Classic and then all but vanished from the tournament circuit, bagged the chip lead with 30 players left in the record-breaking WSOP Super Circuit Canada Main Event at Playground — with Nicholas Palma, Chance Kornuth and Jack Salter all still in the hunt for a CA$1.5 million top prize.
- The CA$5,000 WSOP Super Circuit Canada Main Event drew 2,844 entries for a CA$13,082,400 prize pool, crushing the CA$10 million guarantee.
- Paul Klann leads the final 30 with 11.3 million (113 big blinds), ahead of Guoyan Li (8.1 million) and Nicholas Palma (7.6 million).
- Chance Kornuth (6.6 million) and Jack Salter (5.7 million) are still alive; Daniel Negreanu and Michael Mizrachi are not.
- Everyone left has locked up CA$51,000. The final table pays at least CA$150,000, second place CA$1 million and the winner around CA$1.5 million.
A Record Debut at Playground
Playground’s first turn as a WSOP Super Circuit stop could hardly have gone better. The CA$5,000 Main Event pulled in 2,844 entries and built a CA$13,082,400 prize pool, comfortably past the CA$10 million guarantee the room had put its name to.
Four days of play have trimmed that field to 30, and the man on top of the counts is a Canadian whose résumé reads like a riddle. Klann bagged 11.3 million chips on Day 4 — 113 big blinds, and a clear cushion over the rest of the room heading into Day 5.
Who Is Paul Klann?
Klann has CA$1,170,830 in recorded live tournament earnings, and almost all of it arrived on a single day. In 2013 he beat a 517-entry field to win the WPT L.A. Poker Classic Main Event for CA$1,004,090 — one of the most prestigious titles on the American circuit.
Then he essentially disappeared. His appearances since have been sporadic, and his most recent cash before this run was a min-cash in the CA$2,500 WSOP Circuit Montreal Main Event at this very venue a year ago. With roughly CA$1.5 million waiting for the winner, Klann is now three days of poker away from turning a 13-year-old headline into the second, larger act of his career.
Hall of Famers Fall on Day 4
Day 4 was unkind to the biggest names in the field. Poker Hall of Famers Daniel Negreanu and Michael Mizrachi both hit the rail early in the session, Negreanu losing his stack to Chance Kornuth — who is very much still here, sixth in chips with 6.6 million.
Will Givens, one of the breakout stories of the 2026 WSOP Main Event, also went out, running a bluff into Klann that did not get through. It was the kind of pot that decides who bags a chip lead and who books a flight home.
Klann’s 11.3 million is more than twice the average stack with 30 left — but with six levels scheduled on Day 5, the leaderboard has plenty of time to rearrange itself.
Top 10 Chip Counts
The counts run all the way down to Bradley Smith, who returns as the short stack with 1,300,000.
What’s at Stake
Every one of the 30 survivors has already banked CA$51,000, but the real jumps are still ahead. Reaching the final table guarantees at least CA$150,000, the runner-up takes CA$1 million, and the champion is in line for roughly CA$1.5 million.
For Palma and Salter, that would be another line on an already deep résumé. For Kornuth, who sent Negreanu home on Day 4, it would be a first WSOP Super Circuit Main Event title. For Klann, it would be the biggest score of his life and the strangest comeback story of the year.
How to Follow
Day 5 resumes at 11 a.m. local time with six levels on the clock, enough to set the official final table. The champion is due to be crowned on Thursday, September 10.
