Valentin Cristea Leads Final 49 in EPT National; Defending Champion Cairat Also Advances

After another ten levels of exciting play here at the Casino Barcelona the PokerStars European Poker Tour National is through to Day 3, with just 49 players remaining.

From a total of 4,348 just 650 started the day and when the day ended at just after midnight local time it was Valentin Cristea who stood atop the chip counts.

Cristea came into the day with just 257,000, and managed to stay under the radar for most of the day until a late surge saw him reach five million just before dinner. He would extend that towards the end of the day, and would almost reach seven million before eventually bagging 6,830,000.

Other big stacks include Luis Rodriguez Cruz (6,765,000), Ludovic Geilich (5,365,000), Luis Faria (5,320,000), Yunsheng Sun (5,180,000) and Johann Zeitoun. These five players plus Cristea were the only ones to exceed five million when they bagged up for the end of the night.

Joining these players in Day 3 is defending champion Pedro Cairat who bagged 3,240,000. The Argentinian took home €432,178 last year for victory in this event, and today he was boosted by the late elimination of Aurelijus Stonys. Cairat held deuces against the Lithuanian's ace-ten. The flop had a ten, but the deuce on the turn flipped things around and Cairat held to eliminate his opponent.

Earlier in the day Day 1a chip leader Maksim Bura, Day 1c chip leader [Removed:388] and Day 1d chip leader Faruk Tach all failed to make it through the day, with Tach describing himself as "card dead" all day before getting it in with eights against tens to bust the EPT National.

Day 1b chip leader Rui Nogueira Da Silva however will be heading through to Day 3 with a stack of 2,710,000, or just over average stack.

The payouts were also confirmed today, with the winner taking home €547,000. Every player who made it through to Day 2 was guaranteed €1,650 and some of the notables taking home at least that included. Felix Stephensen, former EPT champion Dominik Panka, both Jack and Louis Salter, Jason Wheeler, Walter Treccarichi, Jerome Sgorrano, Jonathan Abdellatif, Federico Butteroni, Joey Weissman, Heidi May and Ari Engel.

The 49 players are all guaranteed €9,500. Here are the remaining payouts.

Position	Payout (EUR)
1	€ 547,000
2	€ 323,000
3	€ 242,000
4	€ 197,000
5	€ 155,000
6	€ 123,000
7	€ 91,220
8	€ 64,800
9	€ 53,410
10-11	€ 44,350
12-13	€ 39,150
14-15	€ 34,650
16-17	€ 30,200
18-20	€ 25,850
21-23	€ 21,550
24-27	€ 17,350
28-31	€ 14,450
32-39	€ 11,950
40-49	€ 9,500