Duarte and Kelopuro Bag Top Five Stacks for Day 3 of the PokerStars Blowout Series: $530 NLHE [8-Max, The Big Blowout!

Day 2 of the PokerStars Blowout Series: $530 NLHE [8-Max, The Big Blowout!] came to an end after more than eight hectic hours of play with 16 players making it through to the final day.

Day 1 attracted 12,095 entries to the $5,000,000 guaranteed prize pool and another 843 entries were collected before the start of Day 2. With 9,986 unique players reentering 2,952 times, the total number of entries tallied up to 12,938 to get to a whopping prize pool of $6,469,000 in the end.

Claiming the Day 2 chip lead is "DrawindDead" from Poland with 41,507,102 which is worth 69 big blinds when the players come back for Day 3. They are followed closely on their heels by "Gwolde" from the Netherlands with 41,155,298. Completing the top five in the counts are Mathias "mdf92" Duarte (35,414,899), Sami "Lrslzk" Kelopuro (25,504,194), and "Uivelo88" (25,344,164) as the only players with an above-average stack.

Andras "probirs" Nemeth (13,374,993) and Marc-Andre "FrenchDawg" Ladouceur (4,253,540) are also still left in the running but with pretty short stacks so they'll need to get to work once the action resumes on Day 3. All remaining players have secured at least $19,765 but will all be focussing on that first-place prize of $818,484.

Blowout Series: $530 NLHE [8-Max, The Big Blowout!] Top Ten Chip Counts

Rank	Player	Country	Chip Count	Big Blinds
1	"DrawindDead"	Poland	41,507,102	69
2	"Gwolde"	Netherlands	41,155,298	69
3	Mathias "mdf92" Duarte	Uruguay	35,414,899	59
4	Sami "Lrslzk" Kelopuro	Finland	25,504,194	43
5	"Uivelo88"	Finland	25,344,164	42
6	"end2end17"	Canada	20,103,700	34
7	Andrew "dawhiteninja" Wool	United Kingdom	17,795,264	30
8	"Kudgel"	Germany	16,115,984	27
9	"Escapemissio"	United Kingdom	15,305,852	26
10	"sp3edy14"	Ireland	14,990,223	25

Race to the Final Day

With 3,693 players in the field when things kicked off today and only 1,823 getting paid, the road to the bubble was going to be a fast-paced and messy one. Many familiar names and faces failed to make it to the bubble with players like Julien "L1VeYRdrEamS" Perouse, Gary "quiditbear" Hasson, Christian "WATnlos" Rudolph, Lucas "YRWTHMELTHR" Greenwood, Marty "TheLipoFund" Mathis, Dzmitry "Colisea" Urbanovich, and Damian "pampa27" Salas all busting before.

Fintan "EasyWithAces" Hand had reentered at the start of the day but couldn't make things work as he fell to the hands of Peter "Apathy123" Jetten. Arlie "Prince Pablo" Shaban followed him to the rail when he lost all his chips to "AK8783" also didn't make it to the bubble stages.

Ben "Spraggy" Spragg cashed for $1,487 when he busted to David "MissOracle" Yan before Lex "L. Veldhuis" Veldhuis was eliminated by "Uivelo88" in 464th place. But they weren't the only ones to cash but fail to make Day 3. Mike "SirWatts" Watson, Thomas "MarToMchat" Boivin, Kenny "SpaceyFCB" Hallaert, Florian "AAgoodfold" Duta, Tom "hitthehole" Middleton, Jerry "Perrymejsen" Odeen, Laszlo "omaha4rollz" Bujtas, Thomas "WushuTM" Muehloecker, and Nick "Bot35" Marchington are just some of the many poker stars who busted in the money.

After almost eight hours, the tournament was already down to the final three tables. In fewer than 20 minutes only 17 players were left and Julian "jutrack" Track would bubble Day 3 when he three-bet shoved his last 20 big blinds in with jack-ten and was looked up by "Gwolde" who held pocket kings. No help from the board came as Track would collect $27,727 for his efforts over the past two days to signal the end of Day 2.

Plan for the Final Day

When play resumes at 6:05 p.m. GMT on Tuesday, January 12, the 16 remaining players will finish Level 51 which features a small blind of 300,000, a big blind of 600,000, and a running ante of 75,000. Once that is done, the level duration will increase to 25-minutes each and play will continue until a new champion can be crowned on PokerStars.

The PokerStars Twitch Stream will be back to bring you cards-up coverage with commentary provided by James Hartigan and Joe Stapleton with a 30-minute security delay and PokerNews will be right here to bring you all the live updates as they happen so make sure to follow along.

This is what they are all still playing for: