EPT Grand Final: Day 3 Ends with Antonio Esfandiari on Top, 39 Players Remain

Day 3 at the PokerStars.com European Poker Tour Grand Final in Monte Carlo has officially come to an end with 39 players remaining, and US American Antonio Esfandiari is magically the man with the most at the million chips mark (official chips counts not up yet). Starting Day 4 tomorrow with the second most chips is Robin Keston, from London, UK, and Norwegian Johnny Lodden, Hungarian Denes Kalo and Junior American Maxime Villemure round out the top five.

Of note, the EPT Grand Final may or may not have set a new tournament record today for the longest bubble in history, clocked at over 2 and a half hours. That's hand-for-hand play for more than 150 minutes, to use another time unit, just to lose one player, who turned out to be the pro that sometimes looks like a pirate to us, Surinder Sunar.

Watch the PokerStarsBlog's sensationally dramatic account of the lengthy bubble in the video below. Unrelatedly, check out Kate, the dealer chick the PokerListing's guys are digging in Monte Carlo, here. One of you guys close the deal yet?

Watch video above on YouTube here.

PokerNews.com reports here and PokerListings.com here.

UPDATE: PokerStars has posted the official chips counts going into Day 4 of the EPT Grand Final in Monte Carlo. Check it out here. Of the remaining 39 runners, 10 hail from U.S. America with only 3 from Norway, despite having 4 at the top of the count at the end of Day 2. Stig Top Rasmussen has the best name left in the field, with Oyvind Riisem still looking more like an arbitrary assortment of letters to us and not the name of some Norwegian.