Whatever happened in the Grand Masters Suite of the Portomaso Casino today, it would earn the distinction of occurring for the first time ever. So it was that Michael Tureniec became the first person ever to be eliminated from an EPT Main Event in Malta, when his set lost to a bigger set within the first ten minutes of play. And so it is that Evangelos Tsairis is the first day-end chip leader of an EPT Main Event in these parts.
Tsairis, from Greece, continues a decent few weeks on the EPT, having cashed in 18th place in Deauville. There’s a long way to go until the bubble bursts in this one, but he is well set having increased his starting stack of 30,000 to 180,300. That puts him a few thousand ahead of Ignat Liviu, who bagged 161,900.
Although the EPT was breaking new ground, much of what has made this tour so successful was happily familiar. The stars came out, including the likes of Liv Boeree, Marcin Horecki, Theo Jorgensen and Jan Heitmann of Team PokerStars Pro, plus the SportStar Fatima Moreira de Melo, and a host of other top names in the game.
As is typical, some survived to fight another day, while plenty of others perished. Moreira de Melo caused some trouble, but hit the rail. Boeree was three-outered right and the death, and that ended her day. By that point, the likes of Stephen Chidwick, Jeff Rossiter, Oleksii Khoroshenin, Barny Boatman and Kimmo Kurko had already run their race.
For other luminaries, the tournament is worth giving another shot on Day 2. The following players are sitting with the following stacks:
Evangelos Tsaris 180,300
Ignat Liviu 161,900
Alec Torelli 133,100
Thomas Mueloecker 121,200
John O’Shea 114,200
Francois Billard 110,000
Simon Higgins 96,700
Dominik Panka 66,700
Theo Jorgensen 52,900
Daniel Dvoress 49,200
Jack Salter 73,600
Jan Heitmann 75,600
Ruben Visser 44,600
Dimitar Danchev 40,200
Ole Schemion 36,200
Sam Greenwood 25,600
Martin Finger 20,200
It’s Day 1B tomorrow, and that always means a significant increase in numbers. The Global Poker Masters played to its conclusion today, so anyone involved in that (and who didn’t masochistically jump straight into the Main Event) will be involved. We’re expecting the likes of Vanessa Selbst, Steve O’Dwyer, Jonathan Duhamel, Isaac Haxton, Jake Cody and George Danzer, among many others.
Today, we met Jackie “Poker Mama” Cachia, a popular face in these parts. We also watched some early chaos as Malta got to grips with big-pot action. The Italian Poker Tour main event reached its final table.
That’s all (for now) folks!
Follow all the action from EPT Malta on the main EPT Malta page. There’s action from the Main Event on the Main Event page, and information from the Italian Poker Tour event on the IPT page. You may also be interested in the EPT App, available on both Android or IOS. Good price, good price.
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