They thought it couldn't be done.

And they were right, but we got pretty close

The plan was to whittle a field of 220 players right down to a last table of eight. With the intention to complete their mission, tournament staff armed themselves with 14 separate 50-minute levels. It almost did the job though since we set out to our final 10 players.

While Taylor Kuether had the lead since before the dinner break, Georgios Sotiropoulos ran away with it within the previous couple of levels of play. Sotiropoulos kept eliminating players and chipping up until he finished the day with 3.98 million, nearly 1 / 4 of the chips in play.

Georgios Sotiropoulos

Kuether finished in a far off second with 2.53 million and Darren Elias was the one other player that finished with greater than 2 million.

Joe Kuether

Day 3 counts

1. Georgios Sotiropoulos -- 3,975,0002. Joe Kuether -- 2,530,0003. Darren Elias -- 2,040,0004. Chad Eveslage -- 1,685,0005. Will Molson -- 1,350,0006. Knut Karnapp -- 1,345,0007. Andre Akkari -- 1,275,0008. Luc Greenwood -- 1,175,0009. Taylor Von Kriegenbergh -- 1,020,00010. Ismael Bojang -- 710,000

Andre Akkari is not only the one Team PokerStars Pro still within the field, he's the last standing Latin American within the LAPT.

Andre Akkari

This is Akkari's seventh LAPT cash and if he can outlast another two players, he'll be at his second LAPT final table. We'll be guaranteed a boisterous Brazilian rail if this occurs. Akkari even had a crowd cheering him on and Periscoping his play at 2:00am.

But there have been a number of other Latin Americans who started the day.

Two hundred and twenty players took a seat at noon, however the majority of them didn't even make it to the dinner break. Team PokerStars Pro and previous LAPT champion Leo Fernandez was within the field but busted in 88th.

Friend of Team PokerStars and proud Brazilian Felipe Ramos finished slightly higher, but hit the rail in 72nd.

Felipe Ramos

There were a couple of other former champs of a wide variety within the field too. 2013 WSOP Main Event champion Ryan Riess finished 109th and StarCraft/PCA champion Bertrand "ElkY" Grospellier scored another profit the Bahamas after he finished 117th.

Bertrand "Elky" Grospellier

They'll all have a shot on the PCA Main Event title tomorrow, but our final 10 can have their eyes set at the LAPT9 Bahamas trophy tomorrow.

The final 10 are guaranteed $18,900, but a last table appearance will bump that number as much as $28,900. Our eventual champion gets $308,220 for taking down the LAPT9 opener.

We'll start narrowing down the list of contenders again in lower than 12 hours. Play starts back up at noon with 25,000-50,000 blinds and a 5,000 ante. Level 27 can be the primary level to last a whole hour. Players was playing 50-minute levels so far.

So join us tomorrow as we crown another champion here within the Bahamas and do not forget to try our 2016 PCA Main Event coverage.

Read More... [Source: PokerStarsBlog.com :: Latin American Poker Tour]