January 10 2012, Rich Ryan

The 2012 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure Main Event resumed on Tuesday, and after a little more than four levels, Phil D’Auteuil leads the way with 1.472 million chips. Sam Greenwood (1.401 million), Faraz Jaka (1.22 million), Alex Fitzgerald (1.154 million), Anthony Gregg (1.129 million) and Kyle Julius (1.019 million) are biting at D’Auteuil heels, however – all having seven-figure stacks, too.

The day began with 183 players, just 23 short of the money, and the bubble burst during the first level of play. Faraz Jaka entered play as the chip leader, and never fell out of the top five in the chip counts. Despite doubling a couple of players, including Team PokerStars Pros Barry Greenstein and Javier Dominguez, Jaka was able to pick up plenty of pots to finish the day with 1.22 million chips. Jaka is a very dangerous player and an absolute nuisance for his opponents when he has chips.

D’Auteuil was in the middle of the pack at the beginning of Day 3, but he quickly ascended to the top of the ranks. In one particular hand, he had Esteban Ripamonti all-in and at risk with the board reading . D’Auteuil held , Ripamonti had , and the turn and river brought the and respectively. D’Auteuil raked in the massive pot, pushing his stack above 700,000 chips and soon crossed the million-chip mark.

The last woman standing, Xuan Liu, also went on a heater towards the end of the day. After floating around the 200,000-chip mark, she eliminated Mikhail Shikhworich to eclipse 600,000 chips. Shikhworich three-bet jammed 242,000 with and Liu, the original raiser, called with . Her hand held as the board ran out . She ended the day with 680,000 chips.

Pat Pezzin, Robert Rosen, JC Alvarado and David Inselberg were among the two-dozen players who failed to cash, but plenty of notables made trips to the cage, including Shane “Shaniac” Schleger, Leif Force, Liv Boeree, Randy “nanonoko” Lew and 2011 November Niner Phil Collins.

A couple of Team PokerStars Pro members are still fighting for the 2012 PCA Main Event title. Greenstein went on a big heater in the middle of the day, peaking at 550,000. He lost a hand to Jaka late in the day, however, and bagged up 379,000 chips. Dominguez, Luca Pagano, Jan Heitmann and Arnaud Mattern also survived the day, as did Spanish professional golfer Sergio Garcia.

Last year’s champion, Galen Hall, is also still in the hunt to defend his title. He won $2.3 million last year, came in third in the $100,000 Super High Roller this year for $470,400 and is still alive in the final eight tables of this field. Hall will only return with 168,000 in chips (well below average), but he’s still got nearly 17 big blinds and plenty of fight left in him.

Play will resume Wednesday at 1200 EST (1700 GMT), so be sure to follow along right here as the PokerNews Live Reporting Team brings you all the action, eliminations, and drama from the 2012 PCA at the Atlantis Resort in the Bahamas.

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