When we arrived on the scene JC Alvarado was already contemplating a big decision, and we pieced the hand together with some help from one of the players at the table.
The player under the gun, Thomas Berends, had raised and Christian Nolte had made the call in middle position. Alvarado had then three-bet to 6,400 from he hijack and from his immediate left it was Remi Castaignon who four-bet to 12,400.
The action then folded to Nolte who pulled off a big move by going all in for 61,900 total.
After we had pieced the had together Alvarado was still in the tank, and eventually he decided to let go of his hand. Castaignon had the dealer pull in all the amounts, but even with only the shove left to call he decided to let go of his hand as well. Nolte raked in a big pot without showdown and he left everyone wondering with what hand he pulled off this move.
So far the EPT Malta has belonged to 19-year-old Polish player Dzmitry Urbanovich, who took down the €25,000 High Roller last week for €572,300, and then followed that up with two side event titles.
Here's how the PokerStars crew describes Urbanovich's feat:
"After official EPT photographer Neil Stoddart had finished taking Dzmitry Urbanovich’s second winner pic of the festival, the 19-year-old Pole said: 'See you soon!' Well 'soon' has turned out to be the very next day as Urbanovich has just beaten Jack Salter heads-up to win today’s €5k NL Turbo unlimited rebuy for €110,000. This is now the third EPT trophy that Urbanovich has picked up at the EPT Malta Poker Festival and it’s still only Day 1b!
"Urbanovich started his incredible performance by defeating some of the best players in the world in the special €25k High Roller for €572,300. A relatively early finish in that last on Friday meant he had to time to enter the €500 Midnight Turbo – he made the final. Yesterday he won the €1k NL Deepstack Turbo Big Ante for €35,200 and just now he banked another €110,000 for winning the €5k NL Turbo. You might think it was about time Urbanovich thought about entering the Main Event – but no, he’s going to play the €2k NL Turbo first – that started a couple of hours ago and he was impatient to get in to it."
Urbanovich, who has earned more money playing poker in Malta than anyone else in history (at least for now), officially became the last player to register the EPT Malta Main Event. What a story it'd be if he could somehow capture his fourth title in this event!
After two thrilling starting days it's time for the second day of play in the 2015 PokerStars.com European Poker Tour Malta Main Event. Up until this moment 889 players have entered this freeze-out event, but a few late entries are still expected as registration closes when cards are in the air today.
Out of the 512 players that have survived their starting flight many you will recognize. The field is stacked with top pros from all over the world and Max Silver, who's in second place with 176,100 chips, is one of them. Evangelos Tsairis leads the way right now with 180,300 as the Greek pro made a spectacular run on Day 1a.
Romania's Ignat '0Human0' Liviu sits in third place (161,900), while Sam Trickett (134,900) and Alec Torelli (133,100) barely miss out on a spot in the Top 10. Team PokerStars Pros Vanessa Selbst (82,300), Jake Cody (78,000), Leo Margets (65,800), George Danzer (59,000) and Jonathan Duhamel (46,200) are still in the hunt, as are the short stacks of Ilari 'Ziigmund' Sahamies (8,300), Philipp Gruissem (13,300), Kitty Kuo (14,000) and last year's November Niner Jorryt van Hoof (15,100).
The average stack coming into Day 2 is 52,090 or 65 big blinds and after eight levels of 75-minutes on Day 1 it's time to play six levels of 75-minutes on Day 2 without a dinner break. The final level of the day will be 1,200/2,400 with a 300 ante. This means that the end of the night will be around 8:30 p.m. local time.
Stay tuned to PokerNews.com all throughout today as we will bring you all the live updates of this event until a champion has been crowned!
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