Three Former EPT Champions Remain for Day 4 of the EPT11 Malta
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With three tournament days and 19 levels in the bag, the PokerStars.com European Poker Tour Malta Main Event has seen its 895-player strong field whittled down to just 56 hopefuls and Javier Gomez Zapatero is in the lead with 1.698 million in chips. The 24 year old Spaniard, who hails from Salamanca and now lives in London, won his seat in a €215 NL re-entry qualifier on March 1st.
Three former EPT champions are still in to become the first male player to win a second EPT Main Event: Robin Ylitalo (487,000) and Jannick Wrang (433,000) are in the middle of the pack whereas PokerStars Sponsored player Dominik Panka (176,000) is among the short stacks when play resumes in one hour from now at 12 p.m. CET with level 20 at blinds 5,000-10,000 and a running ante of 1,000.
All remaining participants are guaranteed at least €12,800 but only one elimination already provides a pay jump, though all eyes are set on the first-place payout of €810,400 and becoming crowned the first-ever EPT champion on the island of Malta. Big stacks include the likes of Valentin Messina (1,362,000), Jorma Nuutinen (1,121,000), Alexander Ivarsson (1,119,000) and Manuel Zapf (1,086,000).
Other notables to look out for are Sergio Aido (833,000), Antonin Duda (681,000), Noah Vaillancourt (629,000), Day 2 chip leader Sam Chartier (536,000), Mateusz Moolhuizen (515,000), EPT11 Prague finalists Miltiadis Kyriakides (434,000) and Bjorn Wiesler (205,000), WCOOP winner Fedor Holz (422,000), Liviu "0Human0" Ignat (312,000), JC Alvarado (274,000) as well as Yann Dion (266,000).
Day 4 of the Main Event will see either five 90-minute levels or until the last 16 players have been reached, whichever of the two comes first. The third-last day of the festival will also provide Day 1 of the €10,300 High Roller Event as of 1 p.m. local time and you can follow the progress of both in the PokerNews live reporting, so make sure to tune back in often!