Max Silver Tops Mammoth EPT Malta Day 1b Field
Day 1b of the European Poker Tour Malta Main Event played out today over two floors due to the sheer amount of players that turned up. Day 1a attracted 260 players, but today’s 629 entrants dwarfed that number. Registration remains open until the beginning of Day 2, but the 887 players (so far) have helped amass a prize pool of more than €4.3 million and a first-place prize of around €800,000 should be awarded.
Of those 627 that started, around 375 remain and are led into Day 2 by Max Silver, who amassed a 176,100-chip stack. Other players who will be very happy with their days include: Sam Trickett (134,900), Kyle Henry (131,900), Vladimir Troyanovskiy (89,900), Yury Gulyy (108,800), Sylvain Loosli (112,000), Martin Jacobson (81,200), and Jonathan Little (89,400).
Silver’s day got off to a shaky start after he attempted to push Jussi Nevanlinna off top pair on the river. His twice-pot bet with king high was called and 25% of his stack disappeared just like that. The Brit — who used to work for Full Tilt Poker before turning pro — recovered well and had a stroke of fortune in the last level of the night. He flopped a lower set than Brian Benhamou but turned quads after all the chips had gone in on the flop.
Team PokerStars Pro and Online were out in force today. Some did well, and some not so much. Bertrand "ElkY" Grospellier (19,800), Eugene Katchalov (eliminated), Isaac Haxton (eliminated), Marc-Andre Ladouceur (50,400), George Danzer (59,000), Vanessa Selbst (83,200) , Leo Margets (65,800), Jake Cody (78,000), and Jonathan Duhamel (46,200) all represented the red spade with pride.
Ludovic Geilich, Anatoly Filatov, Mike McDonald, Andrew Chen, Davidi Kitai, Steve O’Dywer, Mustapha Kanit, and Jason Wheeler were amongst a host of big names that will have to search for glory (like these players) in the many side events that are scheduled for the week after busting.
Wheeler had an epic three-day journey to get here and he told his story to PokerNews earlier on.
Tomorrow will, as always in EPT main events, kick off at noon CET and six 75-minute levels are scheduled. The tournament will edge closer to the money, but the bubble will probably burst during Level 16 or 17 on Day 3. Be sure to join the PokerNews Live Reporting team back here for hand-by-hand coverage, feature pieces, interviews, and videos.
Until then, it's goodnight from St Julian, Malta.