Soulier, the renowned French pro and 2011 WSOP braclet winner, had a fairly steady day but used a late double-up when he spiked an ace on the flop against then-chip leader Alexandre Andermatt to jump up the ranks.
Thanks to that double Soulier bagged up 1.23 million in chips to sit second overall heading into Day 4 tomorrow behind Dane Jannick Wrang, who holds the chip lead with 1.74 million.
With over $1 million won online, Wrang is primarily known as a $25/$50 PLO regular under the alias EDWARDHOPPER but has almost $400k in live earnings to go along with it.
Busquet, a former WPT champ and popular poker commentator who plays online under the name livb112, was dominant on his table for most of the day with a bad beat the only thing keeping him from the overall chip lead.
Busquet's set of sevens fell to a turned set of kings late in the day to set him back a bit but he regrouped quickly and bagged up 973k to sit seventh overall.
Rounding out the top seven to start Day 4 tomorrow are Robin Ylitalo (1.22 million), Mario Nagel (1.12 million), Simeon Naydenov (1.07 million) and Ramin Hajiyev (1 million).
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99 Start, 88 Cash, 24 Survive
Day 3 began on the shores of Lake Lugano in Campione with 99 runners hoping to fade the first 11 knockouts and make it into the money.
German Tobias Renkemeier was one of the less fotunate to come up short of the cash, busting in 95th place, but several other notables at least got a return on their money before hitting the rail.
Among the departed to cash were former EPT champs Rupert Elder, Martin Finger, Roberto Romanello and Nicholas Chouity and PokerStars pros Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier and Liv Boeree.
Vamplew, Kaiser Hold On
Still in contention and sitting with chips heading into the final 24 tomorrow are 2010 EPT London winner David Vamplew (747,000) and online high-stakes kingpin Ronny Kaiser, also a former EPT champ, with 169,000.
Action picks up again tomorrow at 2 pm in Campione; catch the live updates in the PokerStars blog as they play down to a final table of eight.
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