Party Poker MILLIONS Malta Hotting Up

The Party Poker MILLIONS Malta Festival is now in full swing, with three days of side events completed and four trophies awarded. today sees the start of the €3,000 MILLIONS main event, day 2 of the Hydra High Roller and the resumption of starting days for the $1m Grand Prix. If that’s not enough, there’s also a €330 Omaha and a couple more satellites to the Grand Prix!

Here’s the schedule of today’s action

Start Time | Event # | Event | Buy-In
15:00 | #17 | Grand Prix Hyper Turbo Satellite to event #3 | €60+€10
15:00 | #13 | Hydra Entertainment High Roller Day 2 | €5,000+€300
18:00 | #3c | Grand Prix $1m GTD Day 1c | €500+€50
18:00 | #18 | Omaha Single Day Event | €300+€30
21:00 | #19 | MILLIONS Day 1A | €500+€50
21:00 | #20 | Grand Prix Satellite to event #3 | €60+€10

Hydra High Roller Day 1 Completed

The €5,300 Hydra Entertainment High Roller began on Wednesday with 39 players having entered so far.  When play ended a little after midnight there were 31 players left in contention, with the Dutch duo of Teun Mulder and Michel Molenaar leading the way. Molenaar won the super high roller event at the Malta Poker Festival earlier this year and will be hoping to repeat that feat, which will be a tall task, as its a high quality field with many experienced high stakes players assembled. These include multiple bracelet winner Dominik Nitsche from Germany, Spain’s Leo Margets, Belgian Bart Lybaert and France’s Johan “YoH ViraL” Gilbert. Party Poker Team Pro Matt Staples also entered the event but was one of the unfortunate 8 players to hit the rail before the end of the day.

Michael Molenaar chases a further title in Malta

Late registration was still open until the start of day 2, at 3pm and by the time they had shuffled up and started dealing, the field had grown to 44, creating a prize pool of €200,000!

Overnight chip counts from the Hydra Entertainment High Roller

Player | Nationality | Chip Count
Teun Mulder | Dutch | 140,000
Michel Molenaar | Dutch | 105,000
Aurelien Russo | French | 99,400
Alessandro Pichierri | Italian | 95,400
Alex Peffly | English | 94,000
Orestis Kanakopoulos | Greek | 88,700
Bart Lybaert | Belgian | 85,000
Leo Margets | Spanish | 76,000
Stanislav Zegal | German | 69,200
Farid Jattin | Colombian | 68,800
Alex Van Der Swaluw | Dutch | 64,400
Jonathan Abdellatif | Belgian | 64,000
Thomas Clack | English | 62,100
Koen Meutstege | Dutch | 49,200
Fausto Tantillo | Italian | 47,500
Fabio Peluso | Italian | 44,100
Grigoriy Rodin | Russian | 42,700
Raoul Van Wersch | Dutch | 42,600
Thomas Eychenne | French | 41,500
Ioannis Angelou-Konstas | Greek | 35,800
Scott Wellenbach | Canadian | 30,200
Ivan Balzano | Brazilian | 28,600
Dominik Nitsche | German | 20,000
Candido Gabriele Cappiello | Italian | 17,600
Kamil Sokol | Czech | 17,200
Johan “YoH ViraL” Guilbert | French | 16,500
Jakub Wojtas | German | 11,300

Italian Party

Yesterday’s side event was the €130+€20 NLH Italian Party, which to be fair was a more International affair than strictly Italian. In fact only one Italian player Mattia Ride graced the final table, finishing in 6th place. It was a long drawn out tournament that finally reached its conclusion at 6am, when Germany’s Philipp Kampf defeated Maltese player Marc Schembri to claim the title, the trophy and €6,332 for his efforts. In total 238 players entered, creating a prize pool of just under €30k.

Party Poker MILLIONS Malta 2023  –  #14  €130 + €20  NLH Italian Party
Position | Player | Nationality | Prize
1 | Philipp Kampf | German | €6,332
2 | Marc Schembri | Maltese | €4,600
3 | Benjamin Foulgot | French | €3,490
4 | Scott Fingland | Canadian | €2,600
5 | Svajunas Seduikis | Lithuanian | €1,800
6 | Mattia Ridi | Italian | €1,490
7 | Aleksander Georgiev | Bulgarian | €1,190
8 | Pagareckas Mindaugas | Lithuanian | €890
9 | Raymond Bellante | Maltese | €600
10 | Brian Calleja | Maltese | €520
11 | John Kruljac | Australian | €520
12 | Mark Adams | English | €520
13 | Gary Armstrong | Scotland | €440
14 | Karl Gialanze | Maltese | €440
15 | Sebastian Gotthardt | German | €440
16 | Kamil Skawinski | Polish | €360
17 | Guiseppe Schiraldi | Italian | €360
18 | Jozsef Fauszt | Hungarian | €360
19 | Mityok Erno | Hungarian | €360
20 | Vito Cuscito | Italian | €360
21 | Shota Burjandaze | Georgia | €290
22 | Susta Marco | Italian | €290
23 | Neil Barron | English | €290
24 | Mateusz Kozuch | Polish | €290
25 | Adam Tomasson | Sweden | €290
26 | Yohann Girondin | France | €290
27 | Alfredo Cuti | Italian | €290
Total Entries | 226 | | €29,702.00
Unique Players | 164 | |
Re-entries | 62 | |

The full schedule of events can be found here

Photos from the event can be found here

Photography by Jean Marc Zerafa

Jonathan Raab

Party Poker MILLIONS Malta Media Coordinator