12:15pm: Two down in the first ten minutes
There was no comeback for Benjamin Richardson, one of the shortest stacks heading into today, as he was the first player out today. He failed to follow the lead of a Day 2 Russell Thomas who made a remarkable comeback yesterday.

Day 3 Thomas couldn't even harness the power of Day 2 Thomas as he was soon out as well.

Yann Dion opened to 50,000 from under the gun and was called by Thomas in the next seat before Klaus Gortz squeezed to 109,000 from the big blind. Dion folded but Thomas called to see a [5c][6h]7s] flop where Gortz checked dark. Thomas bet and called all in when raised.

Thomas: [8s][8h]
Gortz: [9c][9d]

"Oh f%%k, that's not what I wanted to see!" remarked Thomas.

The [kd][qc] turn and river weren't what he wanted to see either

12pm: Shuffle up and Deal
Cards are in the air!

11:55pm: The race to the final table is on
Welcome back to Day 3 of the IPT Malta Main Event. Just 30 players remain and the aim for today is to get down to an official final table of eight. There are four tables remaining and they line up like this at the start of the day.

Day 1A chip leader Alessio Peciarolo also ended Day 2 as chip leader after a huge hand at the death of play, his aces fairing well against the ace-king of Julian Stuer. Those two players bookend the rest of the field and all the players counts can be seen by clicking here.

Cards will be in the air very soon so stay tuned.

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Updates provided by Marc Convey, with photos coming from René Velli and Tomáš Stacha.