Day 4 is history for the European Poker Tour stop in Malta and, after the day was shortened due to the frenetic pace of play, Mats Karlsson has taken the lead of the 14-player pack that will come back for action early Friday morning (U. S. time).
30 players still had chips at the start of Thursday, all with visions of the €355,700 first place prize dancing in their heads. The United Kingdom’s Tomas Macnamara was holding court with the chip lead at the start of the day, the only player over a million chips with his 1.028 million stack. There were plenty of challengers for the throne at the start of the day, however, in the forms of Dmitry Yurasov (844,000), Benjamin Pollak (665,000) and Ole Schemion (613,000), just to name a few.
From the crack of the pistol to start the day, the players were active, slinging chips around the Portomaso Casino in Malta. Clashing early in the day were Schemion and former PokerStars Caribbean Adventure Main Event champion Dominik Panka, with Panka forcing Schemion to drop his hand after a bet on the turn and with the board reading K♠ 8♠ 6♠ 8♦. Those chips would prove useful to Panka as the day wore on.
Within the first level of play, five of the 30 participants were knocked out of the tournament, leaving EPT officials with a bit of a dilemma. Originally Day 4 was scheduled to go five levels of play or down to 21 players (whichever came first) but, with the action going quicker than expected, they made some changes on the fly. Instead of holding to the original plan, the players were informed it would be a shortened to four levels of action on Thursday, regardless of how many players were left.
One of those players still in action at the time of the announcement, Panka, almost wasn’t there to hear it. In a clash with Sergey Sergeev, Panka called off a Sergeev all in on a 9-3-3-J board and was stunned to see Sergeev playing an 8-3 for flopped trips. Panka’s pocket Aces were at a distinct disadvantage and, once a ten hit the river, was left with only 43K after the hand. While he could have just rolled over, Panka instead made a stunning comeback.
Panka first doubled through Konrad Abela, his 8-7 miraculously catching a straight on the river of a K-9-A-6-5 board against Abela’s pocket fives, to get back to 90K. He would push a couple more times to get up to 118,000 chips before doubling again, this time through Guillaume Diaz when he once again caught a straight with his A-8 (against Diaz’s A-J) on a 6-5-4-7-4 board. Panka would continue the ascent, chopping some chips from Schemion again, before getting his final double of the night through Frederik Jensen with pocket eights standing to Jensen’s 10♣ 9♣ on a 6-8-Q-2-Q board. Over a million at that time, Panka would end the day’s play with 1.411 million chips, good for third place on the leaderboard.
By the conclusion of the fourth level of the day, Karlsson had almost quadrupled his start of day stack and finished as the only player to eclipse the two million chip mark in the tournament:
1. Mats Karlsson, 2.033 million
2. Dmitry Yurasov, 1.709 million
3. Dominik Panka, 1.411 million
4. Aliaksei Boika, 1.195 million
5. Elie Saad, 1.089 million
6. Peter Ockender, 1.059 million
7. Bastian Dohler, 1.033 million
8. Tomas Macnamara, 943,000
9. Louis Cartarius, 879,000
10. Daniele Colautti, 697,000
11. Benjamin Pollak, 605,000
12. Xi Xiang Luo, 572,000
13. Marco Bartolini, 550,000
14. Ole Schemion, 214,000
Panka is the only player remaining who has previously won an EPT title and, with only this event and Prague in December left, there are only two more chances for the EPT to have its second two-time winner in its history (to join Victoria Coren-Mitchell) before the EPT disappears in 2017 and becomes the PokerStars Championships.
The 14 players will be back on the felt at noon in Malta (6AM Eastern time United States) and will play down to the eight-handed EPT final table, which will EPT Malta’s action on Saturday.