Out of 46,238 runners in the SCOOP-74-L: $109 NLHE [8-Max, Main Event], $3M Gtd, just nine remain in contention for the $434K first-place prize. On Day 3, they navigated through 159 remaining runners to put themselves in contention for that amazing return on investment.

Chief among them in terms of chip count is Latvia's "auercan," who sits just shy of 250 million, good for more than 60 big blinds as blinds have recently moved to 2,000,000/4,000,000/500,000. Ireland's "penguy2" trails closely behind with 241,529,453, a wide lead over third-place "GeleiaTrsk" who has 158,229,788.

Here's the full array of the final nine:

For auercan, the big move came with around 30 players remaining in a three-way all-in spot. They already had a chip lead, but winning with nines against ace-king and ace-queen for a double knockout nearly doubled their stack and rocketed them far in front.

They didn't play many huge hands after but were able to cruise to the chip lead.

Two notable known names have also advanced to the final table in "LOL_U_91" and Manuel "young_diam18" Blaschke. While "LOL_U_91" held the chip lead for awhile during the closing stretch, they sit in fourth and seventh, respectively, so have some work to do to catch the top stacks.

The massive size of the field means not many known players even made Day 3, but a couple who did only to fall short of the final table were Joep "Pappe_Ruk" van den Bijgaart and Dietrich "2pacnrw16" Fast, the latter falling in 37th.

The remaining competitors resume play Wednesday at 1 p.m. EDT with more time still remaining in the 2M/4M level and $28,981 locked up for ninth place. Come back to PokerNews then to see who emerges as SCOOP-L Main Event champion.