Could EPT Malta be set for the greatest ever final table?
It won’t have escaped many poker fans’ attention, but we have an exceptionally strong field here still at EPT Malta. Although only 15 players are left heading into the tournament’s penultimate day, there are two former EPT champions among them, plus two of the players who could claim to be among the best ever without an EPT success.
First up, Alex Boika is aiming for an amazing back-to-back triumph. Although nine years have passed since the Belarusian pro triumphed here in Malta, the EPT has not been back in the near-decade since. It means nobody else has got their hands on an EPT Malta Main Event title since Boika, and he’s putting up a very spirited defence.
Only Anton Bergstrom has ever successfully defended an EPT title, and he did that by winning the two EPT Online events, where he went by the “WhatIfGod” moniker.
Alex Boika has back-to-back hopes
If Boika even makes another final table, it’s going to be a pretty rare occurrence.
How about this for a question, trivia fans: who is the only player ever to make a final table in the same venue the year after their first success? Well done if you said Mike McDonald. The Canadian finished fifth at EPT Dortmund in 2009 a year after he won the event.
No other previous winner has ever got so close to a same-venue title defence.
(Ram Vaswani famously nearly went back-to-back in Season 1 of the EPT, finishing runner-up to Noah Boeken in Copenhagen a few months after winner EPT Dublin. But that was in two different venues.)
Spanish titans going deep
The other former EPT winner still aiming for a double success here is the mighty Adrian Mateos. The Spanish No 1 is regularly nominated as the greatest no limit hold’em tournament player in the world. But even he hasn’t managed to get to the Main Event top spot since his sensational win in Monte Carlo in 2015.
But Mateos has hardly been resting on his laurels. Although he has never made another EPT Main Event final table, he has cashed 15 times in EPT Main Events, made the last two tables three other times and has, of course, also won numerous events at all buy-ins across the world.
Adrian Mateos is one of the best in the world
Mateos has $54 million in documented tournament cashes, and here’s a neat way to put into perspective exactly what he has achieved. His €1.082 million payday for winning the EPT Main Event is now only the eighth biggest score of his career. Meanwhile, his 10th place finish at EPT Dublin in 2016, which was his second-deepest run at an EPT Main Event, earned him €39,320. That’s not even in his top 150 results!
Could this tournament finally be the one where Juan Pardo or Ben Heath finally get their hands on an EPT title? Those two crushers are also riding high in the chip counts with 15 players left.
Pardo, known online as “Malaka$tyle”, is another hugely respected Spanish pro with 11 outright tournament wins on his ledger, including a $50K EPT Super High Roller, another $50K EPT event, plus two $25K EPT tournaments. He has six SCOOP titles and five WCOOP wins, including two this year.
The hugely-talented Juan Pardo
This is already his best EPT Main Event run, having previously only made it to 19th. There could be no surprise if he went all the way at last.
Heath’s time?
As for Heath, the man from Brighton currently sits second on the UK all-time money list, with more than $35 million in earnings. He is a regular on the Super High Roller circuit and has gone close in numerous EPT-branded nosebleed buy-in events.
His deepest EPT Main Event run came in August 2018, when he made it to 12th in Barcelona. A final table is surely way overdue.
The brilliant Brit Ben Heath
For all that, EPT watchers know that nothing is ever guaranteed on this tour. The penultimate day is often the very hardest to survive and we’ve seen star-studded fields become friends-and-family affairs in the blink of an eye.
This one also has great talent all the way through the field, including a former WCOOP Main Event champion (Luis Faria) and the brilliant Norwegian high roller and chip-leader Tom Bedell. It’s still anyone’s game.
But for the time being, let’s celebrate the cream of the crop rising to the top. This time tomorrow, we will have our final.
EPT Malta Main Event last 15
Tom Bedell – 5,765,000
Mykhailo Ostash – 2,985,000
Toni Kaukua – 2,625,000
Juan Pardo – 2,495,000
Ben Heath – 2,320,000
Alex Boika – 2,265,000
Longman Fan – 1,820,000
Adria Calonge – 1,750,000
Joao Tomas – 1,095,000
Luis Faria – 1,080,000
Tomasz Brzezinski – 985,000
Adrian Mateos – 845,000
David Rosich – 410,000
Maxime Chilaud – 275,000
Alessandro Barone – 230,000
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