Today at noon local time, 28 players will return to the Merit Royal Diamond Hotel Casino & Spa to crown a champion in the $2,200 Luxon Pay Grand Final, part of the 2025 Mediterranean Poker Party, to battle for the lion's share of the $2,787,840 prize pool. Among the survivors of the 1,452-strong field is Adrian Strobel, who will start the day third in chips with a stack of 23,600,000, nearly 60 big blinds.
This is not Strobel's first deep run in this event, as the Austrian grinder finished in ninth place last year, being the first one to be eliminated from the final table. His position near the top of the leaderboard grants him a good position to place higher this time as he, along with the others, will be aiming to capture the title and the $375,000 prize that comes with that honor.
Strobel still has quite some catching up to do to chipleader Dmitry Kukhtarev, however. The online player and poker streamer is putting on a breakout live performance, as this will be his first-ever recorded cash. Starting the day with 30,875,000, he has a sizable lead over Strobel and Alexandru Lupuleac, who sits in second place with 23,600,000.
Start of Day 3 Top Ten Chip Counts
| Rank | Player | Country | Chip Count | Big Blinds |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Dmitry Kukhtarev | Serbia | 30,875,000 | 77 |
| 2 | Alexandru Lupuleac | Romania | 23,600,000 | 59 |
| 3 | Adrian Strobel | Germany | 22,375,000 | 56 |
| 4 | Tymofii Savkin | Ukraine | 17,650,000 | 44 |
| 5 | Alvaro Gonza | Spain | 15,900,000 | 40 |
| 6 | Sebastian Ionita | Romania | 14,800,000 | 37 |
| 7 | Konstantin Voronin | Russian Federation | 13,075,000 | 33 |
| 8 | Wojciech Frankowski | Poland | 12,650,000 | 32 |
| 9 | Vlado Banicevic | Montenegro | 11,550,000 | 29 |
| 10 | Sergey Aleksandrov | Russian Federation | 11,325,000 | 28 |
Meanwhile, Day 1c chipleader Tymofii Savkin occupies the fourth spot on the leaderboard, while his Day 1a counterpart Konstantin Voronin ended Day 2 in seventh position. Triple Crown winner Niall Farrell (7,500,000), long-time Merit regular Alessio Isaia (6,500,000), and Romanian grinder Mihai Niste (2,025,000) find themselves in the bottom half of the standings, having secured $16,700 but hoping to spin up their stacks and make some pay jumps.
Remaining Payouts
| Place | Prize | Place | Prize |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | $375,000 | 8 | $46,000 |
| 2 | $250,500 | 9 | $37,540 |
| 3 | $177,000 | 10-12 | $30,000 |
| 4 | $130,000 | 13-15 | $24,000 |
| 5 | $95,000 | 16-23 | $19,800 |
| 6 | $72,000 | 24-28 | $16,700 |
| 7 | $57,200 |
The field will return to blinds of 200,000/400,000 with a 400,000 big blind ante. The levels will remain 50 minutes in length until the final table, at which point they will progressively decrease with each elimination. The live stream will follow the action on a two-and-a-half-hour delay, and the live report will follow suit so as not to spoil any action from the finale.
The road to crowning the Luxon Pay Grand Final champion will be a long and exciting journey, so stay tuned to PokerNews so as not to miss any of the Day 3 action.
