Howard Swains reports on the third day of the EPT Barcelona, packing in a few cliches along the way...

By the end of day two in any major tournament we have usually separated the men from the boys. We have watched the cream rise to the top, others depart into the sunset; survivors battle back from just a chip and a chair, other self implode under the strain. Yes, we've usually swallowed a big book of cliches and are reduced to belching them onto the page.

But they're cliches because they're true, and when the dust settled on a chaotic day (cliche count: 4) of EPT Barcelona, the survivors knew they might have climbed one of the highest mountains, but that it is still uphill from here (5, 6). There were 36 left from the starting field of 203, all in the money and all well worthy of the profit they've already made from their excursion to Catalunya. But the charge tomorrow is for the final table, where the really big bucks await.

Team PokerStars Pro Chad Brown will know all about this, having been in a similar position on countless previous occasions. The former Player of the Year in the American rankings has one of the best tournament records in poker today, and now he's right near the summit of the overnight EPT chip count.

Brown bagged up just more than 250,000 chips tonight, which puts him in the top ten.

Also on that leaderboard will be the German trio of Michael Keiner, Dren Ukella and the PokerStars Shooting Star Sebastian Ruthenberg. Ruthenberg was the chip leader starting today but coped well with what is often an albatross around many a player's neck (cliche: 7) and stayed there or thereabouts for the entire time, eventually bagging up more than 320,000. Davidi Kitai, from Belgium, is the gatecrasher in the German party. He flew to the overall chip lead, broke through the half-million mark, and is up to 544,000.

The PokerStars player Jason Mercier is still on for an historic double EPT crown (8? Yeah, 8), while the Italian Daniele Mazzia is up there too.

But everyone still in this tournament still has a chance. They can still either prosper or be punished by the poker gods (9) when they return tomorrow. They'll play all the way down to a final table when they reconvene. Join us here.