Action folded to Jaroslaw Sikora on the button and he raised to 100,000. Niall Farrell defended from the big blind, and then both players checked the flop. The turn saw Farrell check-call a bet of 125,000, and then he checked for a third time on the river.
Sikora bet 225,000, and Farrell made a quick call. Sikora showed the for not too much, and unsurprisingly it wasn't good as Farrell held a pair of aces with the .
Affable Scotsman Niall Farrell has reached the official final table at EPT Malta second in chips. Farrell already has more than $1.3M in live tournament winnings, with his biggest result being runner-up in the 2013 WSOP $3k NLH event for $366,815.
He has twice fallen shy of EPT Main Event finals however – he was tenth at EPT9 London and 15th at EPT Barcelona in Season 10.
He’s no slouch online either; PocketFives report he has more than $2.4 million in cashes, results that include becoming the FTOPS Main Event champion in 2014 for $266,232. He’s been an online pro since graduating in law from Dumfries University.
Rainer Kempe must be getting pretty used to the limelight at EPTs. He’s now made back-to-back Main Event finals, after finishing fifth in Barcelona for €320,400. He’s been thriving ever since the Season 12 debut event; not only did he qualify online for Malta (again in a €320 Deep Hyper-Turbo), he has also had time to nip up to Nottingham where he had a small cash in a £300 NL Deepstack.
His most recent cash came only a few days ago though when he finished 16th in the one-day EPT Malta €10k High Roller for €20.405. Kempe is one of numerous German players who have moved to the UK to play online. Most settle in London but Kempe has relocated to the seaside resort of Brighton on the South Coast, a city which is also home to EPT Berlin champion Robert Haigh and British pro James Dempsey. Kempe, who hails from Berlin but studied at the University of Potsdam, has live tournament winnings of $636,731, which include his seventh place finish in the $1,111 Little One for One Drop in Vegas for $90,189.
Greenwood, who turned 27 three weeks ago, is one of Canada’s best-known live players and – along with brother Max – a regular competitor on the European Poker Tour. Greenwood has well over $1.7m in live tournament winnings, $1.25m of that gained this year alone - and €110,590 in the last week after he finished sixth in the €25k High Roller.
His year began in style when he was sixth in the PCA $100k SHR for nearly $400,000, and enjoyed a spectacular visit to Vegas for the World Series, gaining his first bracelet in the $1k NL event for $318,977 and fifth in the $10k NL Six-Handed Championship for a further $126,745.
Greenwood also has stunning online credentials; with five €100k+ career cashes, all during 2015, he is over $1M in profit on PokerStars. Other accolades include winning the SCOOP $2k NL-H for $377,280 two years ago, runner-up in the WCOOP Super Tuesday for $221,760 last year and taking down the SCOOP $2k PLO 6-max Turbo Zoom for $141,960 this year. He came in to Day 5 as one of the shorter stacks but has made the final nine partly thanks to winning a 805,000 pot when he shoved on a four-betting Alexander Ivarsson forcing him to fold.
Spampinato hails from Italy but now lives with his wife Daniela in Malta. He works full-time as a sports trader plays poker for fun; he won his seat for the Main Event in a €500 live satellite at Portomaso Casino.
Online, he plays MTT and has had some good results, including winnng the Big $55 two years ago for $17k. The €62,570 he’s now guaranteed for making the unofficial final table is nearly ten times his total live tournament winnings to date. Because of his work, he can't make many poker plans so thinks it’s unlikely he’ll be able to go to EPT Prague. However if he wins, he says he and Daniela will use the money to buy a home and start planning a family.
Bilic has reached the the final table of the EPT Malta Main Event as the chip leader. With $91,704 in total live tournament winnings, the 26-year-old is already ranked #4 in the Bosnia & Herzegovina all time money list but his live achievements pale in comparison to his online results. PocketFives has Bilic ranked as his country’s #1 online tournament player with a string of amazing results on PokerStars and more than $2 million in lifetime cashes. His results include winning the Sunday 500 last year for nearly $80k, back-to-back wins in the Big $162, and winning the PokerStars Sunday 500 for $71,000 in March last year.
Now guaranteed at least €62,570 for making the final table, Alen Bilic has already exceeded his previous best live cash of €18,320 when he finished 69th at EPT Barcelona in August. Bilic’s other big live cashes have all come during World Series of Poker events including a deep run in the 2014 $3k NL event, finishing 15th for $19,547.
Bilic has been a poker pro since graduating in Business Management and Economics in 2010. He first start playing in online free-rolls but, after defeating a 7,000-strong field, started playing for real money (mainly heads-up Sit & Goes) while honing his knowledge via poker training sites and forums. He switched to MTTs in 2012.
Like many Spanish poker pros – including PokerStars and Monte-Carlo®Casino EPT Grand Final champion Adrian Mateos - Cardoso has relocated to the UK and is currently living in Manchester.
He mainly plays online cash games, plus MTTs on Sundays. He’s been a poker pro since the beginning of 2013, and his biggest tournament win online to date is around €30k. He only has a handful of small live cashes.
It’s been another memorable trip to Malta for Jaroslaw Sikora. His first EPT Malta last March wasn’t planned at all as he was supposed to be on holiday in Thailand. However, unable to get a visa in time, he decided to check out the debut EPT Malta stop instead. Good decision! He came second in the IPT Main Event for €97,975 - just a day after celebrating his 27th birthday.
Since his return here for the EPT12 festival, Sikora has had some big online scores as well. Playing as "husajn54" on PokerStars, he notched up another second place finish, this time in the SCOOP €2k NLH event for $256k. His first EPT Main Event cash came in Barcelona and now he's now reached the final nine with 3,285,000 in chips.
Like fellow finalist Sam Greenwood, Dvoress also hails from Toronto but is ranked slightly lower then his fellow Canadian in the country’s all time money list — he is #96 to Greenwood’s #42.
Dvoress’s live tournament winnings total more than $650k, a sum largely acquired during the EPT’s debut stop in Malta in March where he cashed five times for a combined €330k, including a monster €263,000 for third place in the €25k High Roller.
His best Main Event result before now was 17th place at EPT11 Barcelona for €54,700. Dvoress is also a poker coach and has sizeable online results to his name, including winning the SCOOP $2k NLH event last year for $317,911.
![[user153638]](/img/avatars/avatar.svg){kind=avatar}
flop. The 
turn saw Farrell check-call a bet of 125,000, and then he checked for a third time on the 
for not too much, and unsurprisingly it wasn't good as Farrell held a pair of aces with the 
.
