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Hugo Lemaire took over the chip lead after another six levels of the IPT Malta Main Event.
The Frenchman bagged 689,500 chips at the end of day 2. Lemaire is a well known regular playing both live and online. He has already won over $1.5 million in live tournaments. JC Alvarado (579,000) and the Eureka 4 Prague champion Balazs Botond (559,000) are also amongst chip leaders.
168 players will return tomorrow including the World Champion Martin Jacobson (70,500) and also three Team PokerStars Pros. De Meulder twins both collected decent stacks - Matthias has 293,500 and Christopher has 282,000, while Jan Heitmann bagged 115,000 chips.
Other notables who remain in contention are EPT champs Steve O'Dwyer, Julian Track, Ognyan Dimov and David Vamplew as well as the Shark Cage $1 million winner Griffin Benger.
All survivors are in the money. The bubble burst in the last level of day 2. Tadas Gromas was the last player to leave the tournament without a reward, the Lithuanian fell in 192nd place when his aces got cracked by jacks.
IPT Malta top five chip counts: 1st - Hugo Lemaire, France, PokerStars player, 689,500 2nd - Mike Neuens, Luxembourg, 652,500 3rd - Guy Bachar, Israel, 599,000 4th - JC Alvarado, Mexico, PokerStars player, 579,000 5th - Balazs Botond, Hungary, PokerStars player, 559,000
IPT Malta is a tour's record-breaking event with 1,285 participants (all of them uniques). The giant field created a €1,246,450 prize pool and the eventual champion will take home a €221,200 first prize.
