GSOP Malta – Update

When we heard about the GSOP Live – Malta 2010 tournament earlier on this year, we got pretty excited about the event. It featured all the right elements for a great tournament; Great tournament venue and location, affordable buy-in, and one of the top networks featuring some of the best online poker rooms around the globe sending their best players to participate in what has become one of the bigger poker tournaments held on the Maltese islands in 2010.

Betsson, the main sponsors for the Malta edition of the GSOP tour delivered a fantastic schedule for the players who joined in the action in Malta this November – showing that, once again they are at a force to be reckoned with in the poker industry.

The main event featured a $1,600 buy-in and attracted a total of 333 players, taking the prize pool up to a tasty €353,956. €72,560 of those will be going out the ‘last man standing’ at the end of the ultimate struggle which players will face on the final table being held on the 28^th November.

By the end of day 1, we saw a fair number of players exit the tournament, which shrunk to 174 players in total with Niklas Astedt in the lead. Niklas held 135,600 chips by the end of Day1, followed by:

Steffen Rachut – 102,050
Maksims Stecenko – 97,375
Sami Lepisto – 96,650
Steffen Nielsen – 90,575

Jacques Balzan Demajo

Although the tournament featured a number of Maltese players who participated at the $1,600 main event, none of them made it past day 1. Following his ín the money’ placing earlier this month at the IPT by Pokerstars, Jacques Balzan Demajo claimed the spot as the best performing Maltese player at the GSOP, although he didn’t make it in the money this time round.

Franco Portelli [Malta], one of the few players to win his main event seat through a live satellite, exited the tournament a few places before Jacques, after his AK lost to his opponents 5 6 pre flop push, managing to hit a straight on the flop.  Franco was sitting on 16,000 chips at the time, but his opponent had him covered sending him out prematurely.

With such a high level of foreign participation, we were happy to see many familiar faces were still in the game. Amongst these are:

Stefan Raffay – 79,450 chips

Erik Smith – 73,300 chips

Keith Boniface – 20,700 chips

Roman Dours – 11,150 chips

Players are entering day 2 with an average stack of 38,000 chips and those who manage to stay afloat and boost their stacks event further will move onto day 3 before facing off at the final table.

The tournament venue at the Portomaso Casino will feature a special set-up for the final table with the live audience in mind. Viewers can get a piece of the action and support their friends at the final table to see who will win the title of the GSOP Live 1^st prize winner.

Watch this space for more updates on the Gsop live tournament.