The inaugural stop by the European Poker Tour on the island of Malta has reached the final table. Of the six players remaining in the event, online poker pro and poker coach Valentin Messina has eked out a slim lead over Jean Montury, but lurking in the pack is former EPT champion Dominik Panka, who is looking for his second EPT title.
23 men started the action Friday at the Portomaso Casino, with Antonin Duda holding down the lead with his 3.476 million chip stack. There were plenty of challengers to make the final day of the tournament, including a short-stacked Panka (celebrating his birthday with only 391K in chips), Robin Ylitalo, Jorma Nuutinen and Fedor Holz arranged around the three tables remaining. With the Level 25 blinds and antes (15K/30K with a 4K ante) putting some pressure on the players, it was expected that there would be a flurry of early activity and the players didn’t disappoint.
Over the span of the first level of the day, nine players would hit the rail. Holz took care of one of those eliminations, knocking off Dennis Kaj Smit in 21st place, when his pocket Aces stood stall over Smit’s J-10 to push Holz into the lead. Ylitalo also got into the knockout game, taking down Bjorn Lundgren in 20th place. Although there were some concerns about Panka, he also was responsible for an elimination in 19th place Glib Kovtunoy, putting a little health into his stack when he desperately needed it.
Duda would surge back to the top of the standings after a hand where it was obvious both players were going to get the chips in the center. After a raise from Nuutinen, Duda three-bet the action and Nuutinen called. A J-Q-9 flop greeted the players and, after he had checked and seen Duda push out a bet, Nuutinen moved all-in. Duda immediately made the call, showing his K-10 off suit, while Nuutinen mustered a decent pocket pair of nines to go to battle. Looking to pair the board to best Duda’s flopped nut straight, Nuutinen instead saw a trey and an eight complete the board, sending him home after a massive cooler in 18th place.
After Rudolf Wilhelm Zintel was sent out of the tournament in 17th place, the 16 men redrew for two tables with Duda and Holz battling for the lead. In a hand between the two men, Holz would take the lead back, but Duda recovered to draw closer in eliminating Koray Aldemir in 16th place. As this was going on, Montury kept his name in the mix by bumping off Sergio Aido in 15th place when Montury’s pocket Aces stood strong over Aido’s Big Slick.
While the chip leaders fought it out, the two remaining former EPT champions went in opposite directions. Panka, holding pocket Jacks, got a key double through Duda to bring his stack over the million chip mark. On the next hand, Ylitalo (Season 10 EPT London champion) sent nearly all his chips to Messina when he bluffed with J-9 off suit on an 8♣ K♦ 4♦ 3♦ 4♠ board with Messina holding an A♦ 8♦. After a break and a level up, Ylitalo’s dreams of a second EPT title evaporated in 14th place at the hands of Julien Duveau.
From that point onward, Messina went on a heater. He knocked off Mateusz Moolhuizen in 13th place to crack the 2.5 million plateau and continued to surge upwards as the day’s action wore on. By the time play reached the final nine men, Messina was only roughly 200K in chips behind Montury as they jousted with Hossein Ensan for the lead. He would push that stack to 5.5 million in taking a large pot off of Stefan Schillhabel and, although Ensan would keep him down for a bit, Messina seemed destined to hold the chip lead at the end of the day.
After drawing even with Ensan, Messina nearly eliminated Remi Wyrzykiewicz in breaking the six million chip mark. As he continued to add chips, Messina watched as Holz was eliminated on the official final table bubble (ninth place) and Wyrzykiewicz fell in eighth. With the final minutes running off the clock for the day’s play, Duda would fall in seventh as his pocket fours couldn’t catch Schillhabel’s pocket eights to set up today’s continuation of the final table.
1. Valentin Messina, 7.805 million
2. Jean Montury, 7.185 million
3. Stefan Schillhabel, 5.515 million
4. Javier Gomez Zapatero, 3.8 million
5. Dominik Panka, 1.68 million
6. Hossein Ensan, 865,000
Also the only member of Team PokerStars Pro left in the tournament, Panka has a chance to make history if he’s able to come off the short stack. The winner of the 2014 EPT PokerStars Caribbean Adventure, if Panka was able to climb to the pinnacle of the inaugural EPT Malta, he would join Vicky Coren-Mitchell as the only two-time champions in EPT history.
The final table will resume play at noon in Malta (7AM Eastern Daylight Time), with the PokerStars live stream starting an hour later with hole cards displayed. The eventual champion of the EPT Malta takes home the honor of being an EPT champion and a payday of €810,400.
