🇮🇹 Alessandro Pagliuso sets the pace on the Final Day!

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Day 3 of the Pirates’ Poker Treasure Main Event has come to a close after an intense day of action that began with 77 players and ended with just 11 remaining. Despite high expectations for Romanian player Mousa — the dominant chip leader at the start of the day with over four times the tournament average — his hopes of capturing a second EuroRounders title were dashed once again, this time with a 27th-place finish.

The spotlight instead shifted throughout the day: first to Nicolai Macovei, then to Jakub Sterba, and finally to Italian player Alessandro Pagliuso, who bagged nearly 28 million chips at the end of the day.

It was the end of the road as well for former Pirates Poker Treasure champion Gennaro Proscia, who bowed out in 13th place. As he revealed in an interview published on our social channels, he was card-dead for most of the tournament.

Alongside them, another Italian stood out on Day 3 — not Christian Bertu, who entered the day second in chips and with high expectations, but rather Angelo De Marco. Despite spending most of the day as a short stack, De Marco managed to secure a seat at the final day, albeit with the smallest stack still in play.

Also worth highlighting is the excellent performance by French player Safwane Anwar Bahri — a highly skilled and experienced regular — who ended the day in third place with 22,275,000 chips.

Similarly solid was the showing by Czech player Jakub Sterba, who consistently stayed near the top of the counts throughout Day 3, alongside Neculai Macovei, who sits fourth.

A well-deserved mention goes to the very Italian — though half Bosnian — Marko Bajic, who closes the day in 10th place with approximately 9 million chips.

Back to the man of the day, here’s what he told us: “The tournament has been amazing. I actually qualified through a Flip & Go — I was playing cash, turned to Marco and said ‘let’s go take a flip,’ and I won it.

The structure is just beautiful. Like many others, I spent hours sitting on around 20 big blinds, but you can afford to wait it out with a structure like this. I saw a lot of players make mistakes because they were in a rush — they look at the average stack, see it’s 50 bigs, they have 20, and think they’re short… but they’re really not.

Then, once all the top bounties were gone, the tournament basically turned into a freezeout. That’s a bit of a shame, but given the structure, I don’t mind — you’re no longer forced to call just for the bounty, and you can play entirely for ICM and the prize pool.

Am I fired up for tomorrow? Absolutely.”

Top Bounty to "Bella"

As for the biggest bounty of the day, it was the German player Bella who claimed it, taking home a total value of €100,350 — consisting of €90,000 in bounty rewards and a €10,350 entry to the upcoming WSOP Europe Main Event here in Rozvadov.

Top 5

Scrolling through the top 5 stacks of the day, leading the pack is cyclist Alessandro Pagliuso with 27,875,000 chips. He’s followed by Jakub Sterba from the Czech Republic with 24,825,000 and Frenchman Safwane Anwar Bahri with 22,275,000.

In fourth place sits Romanian player Nicolai Macovei with 22,000,000, just behind Spanish contender Fernando Alonso — that’s his nickname — who holds 22,850,000. Below is the full list of the eleven players who advanced to the Final Day, complete with the seat redraw.

Unofficial Chipcount & Seat Redraw

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