Written by :
Published on :
Cards are in the air for the second start day of the €5,300 EPT Malta Main Event. There are already 420 players in seats for Day 1b, including Team PokerStars Pros Vanessa Selbst, Leo Margets, Jake Cody and Eugene Katchalov as well as their Team PokerStars Pro Online colleagues Marc-Andre Ladouceur and Ike Haxton. The latter is playing on home soil as the American-born PCA runner-up lives just a few minutes away from Portomaso Casino.
Many big names have joined today's field including several EPT winners - Mike McDonald (EPT Dortmund), Steve O'Dwyer (EPT Grand Final), Remi Castaignon (EPT Deauville), David Vamplew (EPT London), Daniel Pidun (EPT Berlin), Salvatore Bonavena (EPT Prague) and the latest EPT champion, EPT11 Deauville's Ognyan Dimov.
Other notables include Dan Smith (EPT Barcelona €50k SHR winner), Russell Thomas (2012 November Niner), Diego Ventura (2015 PCA Main Event runner-up), Griffin Benger ($1 million Shark Cage winner) and PCA finalist Yann Dion. EPT9 Player of the Year Jan Bendik is also playing along with FPS High Roller winner Vladimir Troyanovskiy, UKIPT champ Max Silver, APPT Macau winner Dermot Blain, Eureka Prague champ Balazs Botond, Juha Helppi, Argentine online star Ivan Luca, EPT Barcelona Super High Roller winner Vitaly Lunkin and many others.
There were 260 players for Day 1a yesterday with 142 making it through to Day 2. Evangelos Tsairis took the lead after bagging 180,300. The Greek player had a deep run at the last EPT in Deauville, finishing in 18th place. Three Team PokerStars Pros also survived Day 1a: Jan Heitmann (75,600), Marcin Horecki (66,700) and Theo Jorgensen (52,900). 2014 PCA champion and PokerStars-sponsored player Dominik Panka will join them on Day 2 with 66,400 chips.
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
