"I haven't even checked out the payouts, to be honest."

So said Austria's Jonn Forst to us following the belief of today's lengthy, hard fought Day 3 of the Estrellas Barcelona Poker Tour Main Event. Forst did well for himself in this day, playing some gutsy poker with the intention to move into the chip lead late, then increase it considerably through the night's final hands.

"I'll have a look within the morning," he continued, saying for now he will relax and luxuriate in the remainder of the evening. Bagging an enormous stack of 24.090 million -- nearly twice that of his nearest challenger with just eight players left -- may also help him achieve that last goal for the night.

Jonn Forst

There were 98 players -- survivors from the record-breaking 3,292-player field -- returning for today. The young Polish player Jose Carlos Garcia was the middle of attention early on because the start-of-day chip leader, and he continued to stick within the spotlight as he remained in first position because the field swiftly whittled down.

Jose Carlos Garcia

Scott Montgomery (81st, €4,950), Team PokerStars Pro Andre Akkari (80th, €4,950), Farid Chati (71st, €6,000), Liliya Novikova of Team PokerStars Pro Online (60th, €6,000), Hugo Pingray (57th, €6,000), Joao Barbosa

(56th, €6,000), Sebastien Sabic (42nd, €7,560) were among those going out relatively early today. Then as they settled into the evening Sam Chartier (35th, €9,550), Peter Traply (22nd, €16,500), Dermot Blain (21st, €16,500), and Jude Ainsworth (18th, €19,700) also were sent to the rail.

By the time they reached the overall two tables, Mario Lopez of Argentina had spent a brief period within the top spot, but Garcia would retake the lead as Maximillian Senft (16th, €22,900), Laurent Olive (15th, €26,100), Christopher Frank (14th, €26,100), and Padraig O'Neill (13th, €29,300) were knocked out. Ahead of the late dinner break, Ivan Ruban had his aces cracked to head out in 12th (€29,300), and with 11 players left Garcia was still in front.

Ivan Ruban

Post-dinner things go interesting, however, with Garcia unsuccessfully looking to push first Simon Sennhauser, then Jonn Forst off hands with big all-in shoves. Both players looked up Garcia and showed winners, knocking Garcia back off to the ground of the counts while moving upwards themselves.

Forst could be in first position through David Stocker's demise in 11th (€33,000) and Esa Karttunen's being reduce in 10th (€33,000), and he'd remain on top until Garcia finally knocked out Slav Sariyski in ninth (€39,600) to establish tomorrow's finale.

Slav Sariyski

Here's how the counts will look when the primary hand of tomorrow's final table could be dealt, with nearly a whole level of 120,000/240,000/30,000 awaiting the players:

Seat 1: Mario Lopez (Argentina) - 14,410,000Seat 2: Daniel Selles (Spain) - 3,120,000Seat 3: Jose Carlos Garcia (Poland) - 8,855,000Seat 4: Eduard Sanchez (Spain) - 7,420,000Seat 5: Knut Nystedt (Norway) - 7,705,000Seat 6: Simon Sennhauser (Switzerland) - 13,490,000Seat 7: Kondah Abdelhadi (Morocco) - 2,895,000Seat 8: Jonn Forst (Austria) - 24,090,000

Play resumes at 12:30 p.m. CET tomorrow, at which point we'll be back over again with start-to-finish coverage of the tournament's final day. We'll have profiles of the overall eight for you within the morning, too, to organize your following of the day's coverage.

For now, though, we'll follow Forst's lead and check out to sit back just a little. Back mañana to concern ourselves with all those riches awaiting tomorrow's deepest finishers, including the huge €491,000 up top.

Until then, buenos noches!

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Martin Harris is Freelance Contributor to the PokerStars Blog.

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