“It would mean everything to me to make the final table here,” Charania told PokerListings.com after the day was done.
Charania, who’s earned more than $3.5 million playing online poker, has had a ton of close calls in big events but has yet to truly break out in the live arena.
“I’ve had three or four years of live poker and obviously I’ve won a good amount online but I haven’t really had a breakthrough live yet,” he said.
“Winning this would be the biggest thing ever,” he added.
Charania rocketed up the leaderboard this afternoon when he doubled through start-of-day chip leader Nick Yunis from Chile.
Yunis six-bet shoved roughly 140 big blinds with A-T and got snapped off by pocket aces from Charania. Left with just 18k Yunis busted shortly after.
After busting Yunis tweeted that he had misread both his and Charania’s stack sizes.
130 players made it through the day, all of whom will return tomorrow to fight it out for one of the 96 places that will be paid.
Also through with respectable stacks are Germany's Giuseppe Pantaleo (294,400), Canadian Griffin Benger (284,100), David "Doc" Sands (281,800), recent Grand Final Super High Roller winner Justin Bonomo (221,900) and Amit Makhija (215,900).
Here are the top ten chip counts heading into day 3:
Max Martinez (Italy) - 456,300 Mohsin Charania (Canada) - 413,500 Erik Seidel (USA) - 362,200 Anatoly Gurtovoy (Russia) - 339,100 Geert-Jan Potijk (Netherlands) - 324,600 Vadzim Kursevich (Belarus) - 317,800 Lawrie Inman (UK) - 303,500 John Andress (USA) - 301,200 Giuseppe Pantaleo (Germany) - 294,400 Tudor Grangure (Italy) - 293,900Negreanu, Ivey Among Busted
Plenty of big name pros hit the rail this afternoon but the biggest among them were Daniel Negreanu and Phil Ivey.
Negreanu went broke with A♥ Q♥ all-in preflop against pocket kings. His opponent made quads by the river to send Kid Poker on his way.
Phil Ivey, meanwhile, busted on his very first hand after being moved to the feature table.
Also out was Canadian Sorel Mizzi, who ran A-K into kings to lose roughly half his starting stack. He went bust shortly after.
Vanessa Selbst and Ville Wahlbeck, two members of Team PokerStars Pro, both went broke in the same hand, not long after Mizzi was eliminated.
Selbst and Wahlbeck both held K-Q on a K-Q-J flop but unfortunately for them another player had A-T for Broadway. The straight held up and the two name pros were gone.
Fatima Moreira de Melo, a member of Team PokerStars Sport Stars, was eliminated in a lost all-in preflop race against Fabrice Soulier.
Soulier would make it within the last ten minutes of the day before getting himself eliminated as well.
Action continues tomorrow at the EPT Grand Final as we play into the money and beyond. Check our Poker News Section for the update.
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