Team PokerStars Pro Jonathan Duhamel may be heading up the French Canadian poker charge but he’s certainly not alone. Fellow Canuck Chris ‘d0r1t0s’ McClung has been tearing up the online stage for some time having won well over a million dollars in online tournaments and is now converting scores in the live game.

Of the $502,037 live tournament cashes since 2006 well over half of it has been won in Europe… in the last quarter of 2011. McClung scored seven cashes across four festivals with results at EPTs London, San Remo and Prague as well as the World Series of Poker Europe. His largest bink came in a third-place finish in the popular £10,000 six-max High Roller turbo where he finished just behind Vanessa Rousso and Thomas Wahlroos for £84,100 ($131,447). That could have been made to look like small change had McClung not run into a nightmare Day 5 on the Italian Riviera.

McClung had been leading EPT San Remo with 24 players remaining but two big pots saw him bust in 14th, a disappointing end to a promising final stage of the tournament. He ran A♣ Q♠ into Kevin MacPhee’s A♠ K♣ and then K♥ Q♣ into Jan Bendik’s A♠ K♦ on a 9♦ 6♠ K♣ flop. McClung had held the chip lead for the previous two days and although he ended up with just €27,000 he had certainly proved his quality, something he’s quick to play down when asked why he’s met with such a rapid uptick in cashes on European soil: “I don’t know, I’m just luckily here I guess,” said MClung with a shrug who is currently cruising along on around 60,000, healthily above the 35,900 chip average of level 6.

‘Get that iPhone out of my face!’

“I’m here with a bunch of friends from Montreal, including Jonathan Duhamel and Sam Chartier. We talk with each other about hands and most of us swap percentages… I’d be coming out anyway but I always try to qualify and play all the satellite. Sometimes it costs more than the seat but I pretty much qualify every time,” said McClung. Let’s hope he had a cut of Duhamel at the PCA for his own sake.

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