Day 3 Ends With D’Auteuil in the Lead
Instead of playing a full six levels, the tournament staff decided to pause the action early tonight. With 64 players remaining in the 2012 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure Main Event, Phil D’Auteuil leads the way with 1.472 million chips. Sam Greenwood (1.401 million), Faraz Jaka (1.22 million), Alex Fitzgerald (1.154 million), Anthony Gregg (1.129 million) and Kyle Julius (1.019 million) are biting at D’Auteuil heels, however – all having seven-figure stacks, too.
D’Auteuil was in the middle of the pack at the beginning of Day 3, but he quickly ascended to the top of the ranks. In one particular hand, he had Esteban Ripamonti all in and at risk with the board reading 
. D’Auteuil held 
, Ripamonti had 
, and the turn and river came the 
and 
respectively. D’Auteuil raked in the massive pot, pushing his stack above 700,000 chips, and he soon crossed the million-chip mark.
The day began with 183 players, just 23 players short of the money, and the bubble burst during the first level of play. Faraz Jaka entered play as the chip leader, and never fell out of the top five in the chip counts. Despite doubling a couple of players, including Team PokerStars Pros Barry Greenstein and Javier Dominguez, Jaka was able to pick up plenty of pots to finish the day with 1.22 million chips. Jaka is a very dangerous player and an absolute nuisance for his opponents when he has chips.
The last women standing, Xuan Liu, also went on a heater towards the end of the day. After floating around the 200,000-chip mark, she eliminated Mikhail Shikhworich to eclipse 600,000 chips. Shikhworich three-bet jammed 242,000 with 
and Liu, the original raiser, called with 
. She held as the board ran 
and ended the day with 680,000 chips.
Pat Pezzin, Robert Rosen, JC Alvarado and David Inselberg were among the two-dozen players that failed to cash, while plenty of notables made trips to the cage, including Shane “Shaniac” Schleger, Leif Force, Liv Boeree, Randy “nanonoko” Lew and 2011 November Niner Phil Collins.
There are a couple members of Team PokerStars still fighting for the 2012 PCA Main Event title. Greenstein went on a big heater in the middle of the day, peaking at 550,000. He lost a hand to Mr. Jaka late, however, and bagged up 379,000 chips. Dominguez, Luca Pagano, Jan Heitmann and Arnaud Mattern also survived, and will look to defend their home turf tomorrow. Spanish professional golfer Sergio Garcia also still remains with 235,000 in chips.
Furthermore, still in the hunt is last year's champion Galen Hall. He won $2.3 million last year, came in third in the $100,000 Super High Roller this year for $470,400 and is still alive in the final eight tables of this field. Hall will only return with 168,000 in chips(well below average), but he's still got nearly 17 big blinds and plenty of fight left in him.
We will resume tomorrow at noon local time, where we will play down to 24 players. Until then, goodnight from the Atlantis!
