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Friday, January 1, 2016

ESPT6 Barcelona: There's no stopping now; Garcia leads final 98 into Day 3

We call them EPT "stops," but in truth there is barely any stopping going on at all at these festivals. Case in point, Day 2 of the Estrellas Barcelona Main Event ended just a handful of hours ago, and now we're watching Day 3 get underway, with the 98 survivors from the €1K tournament's record-breaking 3,292-player field in their seats and prepared to battle for seats around the next EPT final table.

Jose Carlos Garcia returns to the biggest stack of all of 98, having grabbed the chip lead before the dinner break and held onto it to the end. Garcia bagged 3.752 million, clear of nearest challengers Nikolay Fal (3.302 million) and John Forst (3.08 million) to end the night.

Jose Carlos Garcia

We're getting used to the young player from Poland making himself conspicuous whenever these "stops" start. At the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure in January, Garcia made the final table of the series-starting Latin American Poker Tour Bahamas event, ultimately finishing fourth. Then in May he made it to the final table of the EPT Grand Final Main Event, making it all of the way to fifth in that one.

Add to that his exploits online at PokerStars, where he plays, aptly, as "TryToExploit," and collected a Sunday Million win last year. Hardly a surprise, then, to see Garcia a strong contender once more.

Mario Lopen, Jude Ainsworth, and Hugo Pingray are among the other big names with big stacks to start today, while Peter Traply, Sebastien Sabic, Scott Montgomery, Dermot Blain, Team PokerStars Pro Online member Liliya Novikova, and Team PokerStars Pro Andre Akkari are also still in contention. Click here for a list of all 98 returners along with their start-of-day-3 counts.

The plan today is to work all of the way down to an eight-handed final table, and there will be no stopping us, either, as we begin reporting from every level along the way. Stay tuned and we'll find out together who makes it through to tomorrow and a shot at the eye-popping €4.91 million sitting up top.

Ready? Go!