It was a quick day of work for the contenders at the European Poker Tour’s stop in Malta on Thursday. After only 3½ levels of play, the final 16 players have been determined with Alexander Ivarsson emerging as the chip leader with 2.418 million chips once they were bagged up for the day.
The folks at the EPT probably could have gone all the way to the final table on Thursday but decided not to push the issue. Only 40 players were left when the action started as Jaroslaw Sikora stood atop the leaderboard. With his 1.457 million stack, Sikora still faced challenges from such players as Ivarsson (1.306 million), Faraz Jaka (1.2 million) Niall Farrell (1.16 million) and Sam Greenwood (also 1.16 million) from around the Portomaso Casino tournament room.
Literally on the first hand of play, the eliminations started in earnest. Paul Berende was faced with a difficult decision as, after he raised it to 80K, Nabil Mohamed moved all in from the blind and, thinking Berende was all in, turned up A-Q for action. The problem was that Berende still had a few chips behind that Mohamed didn’t see. With the action back on him – and knowing Mohamed’s hole cards – Berende took several minutes to think about the situation.
After some debate and a little push by tablemate Mike McDonald (who called the clock), Berende made the call and was racing with his pocket sevens. That race ended almost immediately on the flop, coming down 10-J-K to give Mohamed a flopped Broadway straight and leave Berende in a serious hurt. Once a blank came on the turn, Berende was drawing dead and out of the tournament in 40th place.
The parade kept up as the players set a torrid pace. Marcin Wydrowski, Pierre Chevalier, Bryn Kenney, Ivan Luca, Thomas Muehloecker, Johnny Lodden and McDonald all headed to the rail over the next couple of hours as Sikora, Jaka and Alen Bilic jousted for the chip lead. Shannon Shorr would join what was becoming a quite notable rail in 22nd place after Gianluca Escobar used pocket Aces to crush Shorr’s pocket treys and Greenwood would resuscitate his stack a bit in knocking off Jens Lakemeier in 21st place. It was Ivarsson who made the biggest move, however, in a hand that gave him the chip lead.
In a blind versus blind battle with Farrell, Ivarsson and Farrell saw a monochrome 4♥ J♥ 5♥ flop that brought a bet out of Ivarsson and a call from Farrell. Those actions would repeat themselves when a K♣ came on the turn but, when an 8♠ came on the river and Ivarsson fired a third bullet, suddenly Farrell couldn’t find the call. He would muck his cards and hand a large pot over to Ivarsson, pushing him up to 2.208 million and the chip lead.
Ivarsson would ride that chip stack to the end of day lead, but Day 3 chip leader Sikora is going to be right behind him when they come back to the felt on Friday in the Portomaso Casino:
1. Alexander Ivarsson, 2.418 million
2. Jaroslaw Sikora, 2.3 million
3. Niall Farrell, 1.902 million
4. Rainer Kempe, 1.726 million
5. Giulio Spampinato, 1.725 million
6. Gianluca Escobar, 1.537 million
7. Nabil Cardoso, 1.175 million
8. Bjorn Geissert, 1.103 million
9. Alen Bilic, 1 million
10. Daniel Dvoress, 986,000
Greenwood is still in the mix with his 970K in chips (good for 11th place) while another notable name, Kitty Kuo, sits in 14th place with her 510K in chips.
It looks as though the action may go a bit longer into the night on Friday than it did on Thursday. The plan for Friday’s action in Malta will be to take the final 16 players down to only six (the official EPT final table will kick in at eight players). Play will begin at noon (Malta Time, 7AM on the East Coast) and should prove to be exciting as the final table is determined for the latest event on the EPT.
