In partnership with the Italian Poker Tour, the European Poker Tour (EPT) visited the stunning Mediterranean island of Malta for the first time in March 2015. EPT Malta kicked off on March 17 at the Portomaso Casino while €1,100 IPT Main Event took place from March 18-23. The €5,300 EPT Main Event is still ongoing and is set to conclude on March 28.
Georgios Zisimopoulos captured the biggest title in the history of Italian Poker Tour history, the IPT Malta Main Event, for €142,205. The score was the largest live cash the Greek has registered to date as Zisimopoulos ended up taking home the lion’s share of a five-way deal that awarded him €114,205, Nicolino di Carlo €119,585, Michael Feil €101,260, Jaroslaw Sikora €97,975, and Frederik Reusch €97,675, with Zisimopoulos adding €28,000 after outlasting his four fellow deal-makers. The 1,285 entrants took part in the €1,100 event at Portomaso Casino which smashed the previous IPT record of 1,010, set in Season 6 at Sanremo. Given below are the final table results:
| Place | Player | Prize |
| 1 | Georgios Zisimopoulos | €142,205* |
| 2 | Jaroslaw Sikora | €97,975* |
| 3 | Nicolino di Carlo | €119,585* |
| 4 | Michael Feil | €101,260* |
| 5 | Frederik Reusch | €97,675* |
| 6 | Georgi Abuladze | € 39,000 |
| 7 | Ezio Nisoli | € 29,800 |
| 8 | Julian Track | € 21,000 |
Day 1a of the EPT Malta Main Event attracted 260 players, and after eight 75-minute levels of play only 142 would remain in contention. Greece’s Evangelos Tsairis lead the day with 180,300. Tsairis finished 18th in the EPT Deauville Main Event back in January for €22,160. Of the 629 entrants that appeared on Day 1b of the EPT Malta Main Event, 375 remain and were led by Max Silver, who collected a 176,100-chip stack.
Day 2 saw the total field to 895 players that created a prize pool of €4,340,750 and was distributed to the top 121 finishers with a hefty €810,400 going to the eventual winner. After six 75-minute levels of play, the field was reduced from 512 down to 186 with Sam Chartier leading the way with stack of 465,500.
Further, Day 3 bought 186 of a 895-player field return for five 90-minute levels of play, during which time the money bubble burst and the top 127 earned a piece of the €4,340,750 prize pool. Later, only 56 remained in contention for the €810,400 first-place prize, and finally Spain’s Javier Gomez Zapatero reigned high with stack of 1.698 million.
At the start of Day 4, just 56 players remained in the EPT Main Event Malta, but after five 90-minute levels of play, the field was cut down to the final 23. The man best positioned to make a run at the €810,400 first-place prize is Antonin Duda, who bagged up the chip lead with 3,476,000.
With the Day 5 already going live, the race to the final table is on. So, keep watching this space for further updates.