We call them EPT "stops," but actually there's barely any stopping occurring in any respect at these festivals. Case in point, Day 2 of the Estrellas Barcelona Main Event ended only 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 of their seats and ready to battle for seats across the next EPT final table.

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

Jose Carlos Garcia

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

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

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

The plan today is to work the entire way right down to an eight-handed final table, and there'll be no stopping us, either, as we start reporting from every level along the way in which. Stay tuned and we'll discover together who makes it through to tomorrow and a shot on the eye-popping €4.91 million sitting up top.

Ready? Go!

Click here for live updates from ESPT Barcelona Day 3.

To get the entire latest news, chip counts and payouts from EPT12 Barcelona, you should definitely download the EPT App on both Android or IOS.

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Martin Harris is Freelance Contributor to the PokerStars Blog.

Read More... [Source: PokerStarsBlog.com :: Estrellas Poker Tour]