There’s nothing more entertaining to watch than a player who is clearly loving every single second of the day and Berardino Palmieri is definitely that man. The Italian, who has been the chip leader since the dinner break, has been fantastically animated during important hands and the very last hand of the day was no exception.
The board was reading 6♣ 3♦ 7â™ 6â™ and Palmieri had 10♦ 9♦ against a short stack’s Aâ™ J♣ , the former was out of his chair calling for cards. The river was the 10♥ and Palmieri celebrated by hugging the dealer and kissing her on the cheek, “personal space” clearly not being a term the overjoyed Italian knows.
Palmieri finished the day with 340,800 (over six times the average) and no-one else looks to be close to that, indeed it was difficult to find anyone who had even 200,000, let alone 300,000. Not only was he getting chips off other players he was also able to make them pay for his beer.
PokerStars sponsored player Dominik Panka was knocked out just before the end, the Polish player joking, “I and the guy next to me were going to go all in blind but then someone else decided to get involved, very rude.”
However, some of the other well-known players did manage to make it through including Eureka4 Prague champion Balazs Botond (122,500), EPT winners David Vamplew (68,600) and Arnaud Mattern (39,900) as well as Yann Dion (44,000) and Luca Moschitta (20,000). Some of them will no doubt be looking forward to the day off tomorrow but others, like Vamplew will simply find something new to grind.
“I’m coming in at 11am for the satellite tomorrow. 11!” laughed the Scotsman, perhaps more stunned about his own potential ability to get up early ahead of anything else.
With that, the IPT is done for today but you can still follow the final hour of the EPT €25,000 High Roller. Otherwise Day 1B will begin at 12pm CET on Thursday with ten one-hour levels scheduled as the EPT Malta Festival continues.
To get all the latest news, chip counts and payouts, don’t forget to download the EPT App on both Android or IOS. With this amount of info, you’ll be as happy as Berardino Palmieri.
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