Alessio Peciarolo Leads IPT7 MALTA2 After Day 1A
Sharing the limelight with the EPT once again, the Italian Poker Tour is celebrating the tour's 50th stop here at the EPT 12 Malta Poker Festival.
The first major event on the 76-event schedule is the €1,100 IPT Main Event, attracting 224 players on Day 1a.
Alessio Peciarolo is the chip leader (out of 59 survivors) after bagging 279,100 tonight. The 42-year-old from Rome is a passionate football fan who's working in a restaurant, but as you might guess, his other hobby is poker. Peciarolo is a recreational player and travels to Las Vegas every summer. Last year, he seized his career's biggest payday - winning a $235 tournament for an impressive $35,716. Peciarolo is followed by fellow Italian Massimo Di Cicco, the EPT5 Prague runner-up sits in second place with 263,300.
Representing the red spade, Team PokerStars Pros Luca Pagano and Matthias De Meulder entered Day 1a as well as Team Online's Mickey Petersen. They all made it through to Day 2 with Pagano amassing a decent stack of 139,100 chips thanks to his late double up with aces versus kings. De Meulder was sitting right next to the Italian and has 49,000. Petersen bagged 79,100 to become the only EPT champ getting through as Rupert Elder, Dominik Panka and Ben Wilinofsky all bust during the day.
IPT Malta Day 1a top five chip counts:
1st - Alessio Peciarolo, Italy, 279,200
2nd - Massimo Di Cicco, Italy, 263,300
3rd - Henry Broens, Netherlands
4th - Pierre Chambon, France, 199,700
5th - Maksim Shulga, Russia, PokerStars qualifier, 198,700
EPT11 London winner Andrew Chen has 84,100 while former November Niner Russell Thomas survived as the shortest stack (20,600) while other notable players fell: UKIPT Dublin champ Kevin Killeen, Eureka 4 Prague winner Balazs Botond and EPT9 Berlin High Roller champion Griffin Benger were all eliminated.
IPT MALTA MAIN EVENT HISTORY:
IPT2 Malta1 - 385 players, Michal Pochlopek from Poland for €190,000
IPT2 Malta2 - 237 players, Giacomo Loccarini from Italy for €122,000
IPT3 Malta - 131 players, Marco Figuccia from Italy for €82,000
IPT7 Malta1 - 1,285 players, Georgios Zisimopoulos from Greece for €142,205
CARREL BEATS TOUGH FIELD IN €5K WIN THE BUTTON!
Only five players sat down for today’s €5k Win the Button tourney but you couldn’t ask for a tougher table than the likes of Ben Heath, Martin Finger, Patrick Leonard, Charlie Carrel and IPT7 Malta1 champion Georgios Zisimopoulos. Eventually, it was the youngest player who took it down. Jersey-born Carrel, 22, beat his best friend Heath heads-up to collect the €15,760 top prize and first trophy of the festival while Heath, 23, earned €8,490 for his efforts. Carrel's first big score on the European Poker Tour came here in Malta in March when he made the final of the €10k High Roller, finishing fifth for €183,800; just two months later he won the PokerStars and Monte-Carlo®Casino EPT Grand Final Grand Final High Roller for a monster cash of €1,114,000.
MALTA POKER CUP HITS 129 ENTRIES ON DAY 1A
The €330 Malta Poker Cup kicked of at 8pm with 129 players participating including a Dutch EPT regular Mateusz Moolhuizen, EPT11 Barcelona finalist Slaven Popov, David Lappin and Elena Stover (who's originally from the USA but now's living here in Malta). More information on the Malta Poker Cup will follow in the morning
