Alexander Ivarsson Bags Impressive Lead After Day 1 of the EPT13 Malta High Roller
The first day of the 2016 PokerStars.com EPT13 Malta �10,300 High Roller attracted a field of 137 entries, of which 109 were unique entries and 28 players opted to fire a second bullet throughout the ten levels of one hour each. Only 73 players bagged up chips for Day 2 and Alexander Ivarsson secured a decent lead over the rest of the field with 379,100. The Swede was always among the big stacks at the EPT12 Malta Main Event back in October 2015 and ultimately had to settle for 9th place and a payday of �49,560 one year ago.
Second in chips is Armando Collado from Nicaragua with 258,300, while Diego Zeiter bagged up 251,700. Other big stacks and notables include [Removed:172] (220,000), Martin Finger (216,000), Farid Jattin (214,700), Stephen Chidwick (207,300), Team PokerStars Pro Theo Jorgensen (189,500), Cate Hall (166,900) and Georgios Zisimopoulos (161,800).
Among those to enter twice and run out of chip entirely were Vladimir Troyanovskiy, Dietrich Fast, Jason Wheeler, Benny Spindler, �10K,300 Single-Day High Roller champion Jakub Michalak, and Andrey Andreev. The latter in fact had been sent to the rail not once but twice in the first two and a half hours. Andreev's first bullet saw him flop top two pair only to run into the bottom set of Ivarsson. The Swede then consistently built his stack and eliminated several shorter stacks on his way to an impressive overnight lead.
Chidwick ran on his first bullet with kings into aces, bought back in and doubled before busting Spindler with ace-eight suited versus ace-queen. Zisimopoulos cooled down the hot early run of Charlie Carrel by winning a flip with ace-king against pocket queens, an ace hit on the river. Adrian Mateos was among the big stacks for most of the day, but a big move against Martin Finger with king-deuce suited in the last level of the night was not rewarded. The Spaniard eventually bagged up a mere 23,300, other short stacks for Day 2 include Nick Petrangelo (15,000), Frederik Jensen (19,600) and Davidi Kitai (35,000).
Registration remains open until 15 minutes prior to the restart with blinds of 1,000-2,000 and a running ante of 300, all new entries will thus receive 25 big blinds for level 11. The seat draw for Day 2 and the prize pool information will be released once the cards are back underway. The PokerNews live reporting team will be on hand to provide all the action until a winner is crowned on Saturday, so make sure to tune back in regularly.