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The winner of the inaugural €5,300 EPT Malta Main Event will get €810,400.
There were 895 in the field in total, creating a €4,340,750 prize pool. Six new players bought in today just before play started, including Sorel Mizzi, Olivier Busquet and Dzmitry Urbanovich - who has been so busy winning other events here (three so far) that he only joined the Main Event at the very last moment. They joined the 512 others who survived Day 1a and 1b. A total of 127 players will finish in the money with €9,120 for a min-cash.
EPTLive started at noon with an astonishing feature table which still includes Team PokerStars Pros Bertrand "ElkY" Grospellier and Jake Cody as well as EPT Deauville champ Sotirios Koutoupas and Jorma Nuutinen. Vanessa Selbst was on the table but bust a while ago.
EPT MALTA NATIONALITIES There were 64 countries represented at EPT Malta. The festival is being held jointly with the Italian Poker Tour and - as Malta is only 180 km from the Italian island of Sicily - it’s no surprise that Italy accounts for the most players in the Main Event: 96 (11%), followed closely by Germany with 91 (10%). There are 75 Brits, 60 French and 42 Dutch. Five Maltese nationals also took part – although only Alan Brincat made it through to Day 2.
URBANOVICH SEIZES LEAD IN EPT SEASON 11 POY RACE EPT Malta “Triple Crowner” Dzmitry Urbanovich has leap-frogged his way to the top of the EPT Season 11 Player of the Year leaderboard. The 19-year-old Pole was lying seventh place before the EPT Malta Poker Festival began but is now 28 points clear of nearest rival Davidi Kitai after three Malta trophy grabs, and a fourth final table. Azerbaijan’s Ramin Hajiyev has notched up more points after finishing ninth in the €25k High Roller but there’s no change for former top three Davidi Kitai, Vladimir Troyanovskiy and Joao Vieira. They spent the last few days of EPT Deauville jostling for first place with Kitai eventually emerging on top after winning the EPT Deauville €2k NL Turbo - however all three have yet to cash here in Malta. You can look at the rankings here.
Season 11 EPT Main Events so far: Barcelona: 1,496 players, Andre Lettau (Germany), €794,058 London: 675 players, Sebastian Pauli (Germany), £499,700 Prague: 1,107 players, Stephen Graner (USA), €969,000 PCA: 816 players, Kevin Schulz (USA), $1,491,580 Deauville: 592 players, Ognyan Dimov (Bulgaria), €543,700 Malta: 895 players
