The popular Grafton, known as @SquidPoker on Twitter and running very well over the last year, followed up a successful Day 2 yesterday with another steady climb up the leaderboard.
Grafton bagged up 985,000 to sit third overall heading into Day 4 behind chip leader Shahaf Hadaya at 1.23 million and Matthieu Herve with 1.05m.
Mitchell, best known for winning the 2010 Irish Open, also held steady on the leaderboard to sit fourth with 983,000.
Rounding out the top 5 is Frenchman Aurélien Guiglini with 942,000.
Frankland Rises, Koon Drops
Another British player seeing some success in France today was Matthew Frankland, who ran his 144k stack to start the day all the way up to 606,000.
Not quite as lucky, American Jason Koon couldn't build much momentum with his 285k stack and wrapped the day with just 386,000.
Clik here to view.
Other notables still alive in the final 51 are Alexander Dovzhenko (459,000), Kristijonas Andrulis (365,000) and Lucien Cohen (209,000).
Big names to hit the rail today included Ana Marquez, Steve O’Dwyer, Dermot Blain and Vanessa Rousso.
The Top 10 in Chips Heading to Day 4:
1. Shahaf Hadaya 1,237,000 2. Matthieu Herve 1,050,000 3. Samuel Grafton 985,000 4. James Mitchell 983,000 5. Aurelien Guiglini 942,000 6. James Bills 877,000 7. Hugo Pingray 768,000 8. Jeffrey Hakim 714,000 9. Cyril Andre 669,000 10. Enrico Rudelitz 643,000Action picks up in Deauville tomorrow at 12 local time; follow the live updates on the PokerStars blog as they play down to the final few tables.
Visit www.pokerlistings.com
