Brazil's Simão Tops the Charts with 24 Left
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That's all she wrote for Day 3 of the PokerStars.com EPT Madrid.
Three days ago, 477 players put up the necessary €5,000 to get a seat in this Main Event, and that number has been trimmed down to a tidy 24. Thanks to a monster pot that played out just before the dinner break, Ilan Boujenah is among the overnight big stacks, but he was just pipped by João Paulo Simão in the last hand of the night. Simão knocked out the last two players in the same hand to bag up 1.973 million and take the chip lead into tomorrow's penultimate day.
This is the time of the night when we like to tell you about the eliminations, the big stacks, and the notables. So we'll start with the eliminations. Matthew Frankland was one of the first to fall this afternoon, and he was soon joined on the rail by the likes of Yorane Kerignard, David Benyamine, Ebony Kenney, Barny Boatman, Yann Dion, and Dermot Blain. Also failing to survive was McLean Karr, and he was unlucky enough to run pocket fives into pocket tens on the direct bubble to end his run as the last non-casher.
We also lost most of our chances at finding the EPT's first-ever double champion with the exits of a few familiar faces. Season 7's San Remo champion, Rupert Elder cold four-bet shoved pocket sixes into pocket nines to end his day shy of a cash. Near the end of the night, EPT6 Berlin champion, Kevin MacPhee four-bet ace-queen into two aces, and he did manage to pick up a little spending money on his way out the door. Toby Lewis and Joao Barbosa have won EPTs in Portugal and Poland, respectively, but they too fell short of a super deep run here in Madrid. We've still got one former champ left; more on him in a moment.
In addition to the former champs, the rest of the Team PokerStars Pros were run out of the room before night's end too. Mexico's Angel Guillen was the first of them to fall just a few spots shy of the money, and Norway's Johnny Lodden lost a flip with pocket threes to ace-jack to seal his exit during the min-cash stages. Portugal's Henrique Pinho tried to double with his own ace-jack, but MacPhee bested him with 
to leave only Alex Kravchenko to represent the team. The Russian nursed his short stack for a long while today before being sent off by Ricardo Ibanez Rodriguez, ending the run of everyone sporting the Team Pro patch.
On to the big stacks and the notables. The biggest of all the stacks is the aforementioned Simåo, and he's opened up a little gap on the chase pack. Simão is a 23-year-old poker pro from Belo Horizonte, and he plays as "IneedMasari" on PokerStars. In 2010, he won WCOOP Event #12 ($215 No Limit Hold'em Heads-Up), and he took down a side event at LAPT Florianopolis that year, as well. This is his fourth and largest live cash, and he'll be looking to parlay this effort into an EPT title in two days' time.
Lurking in the waters below him are a school of sharks that include Ilan Boujaneh, French rapper Bruno "Kool Shen" Lopes, Clayton Mozdzen, Taylor Paur, Nicolas Levi, and Tristan Clemencon. Also still fighting is Mike "Timex" McDonald, the last of the former EPT champs left standing. He'll return to the felt tomorrow with a top-five stack of 883,000 chips and an above-average chance to become the tour's first double champ.
The final 24 will be back inside the Casino Gran Madrid tomorrow at high noon, and we'll be back to shrink the field to just one table.
Until then, goodnight from Madrid!