Tomas Sujeta Claims the Title in The Malta Poker Festival Grand Event for €150,000
After spending almost 8.5 hours in Club TwentyTwo, Tomas Sujeta took down The Malta Poker Festival Grand Event by defeating Day 2 and 3 chip leader Dmitri Dan heads-up for the amazing €150,000 first-place prize while Dan walked away with €82,000. The second edition of the Grand Event in the Portomaso Casino attracted 1,324 entries to create a total prize of €642,140 of which the lion share was handed out today.
Eight players (and their rail) took the elevator up to the 22nd floor of the Portomaso Tower this afternoon to battle it out until one player would be victorious. Sujeta came into the day third in chips and got to lift up the biggest trophy at the end of the day. He also claimed his biggest live tournament win ever, more than tripling his previous record according to The Hendon Mob database.
The €82,000 Dan is going home with is also his biggest cash ever as he only has just over $7,000 in cashes recorded on his profile. This was also the case for some of the other players on the final table.
Final Table Results
| Place | Player | Country | Prize (EUR) | Prize (USD) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Tomas Sujeta | Lithuania | € 150,000 | $167,525 |
| 2 | Dmitri Dan | Israel | € 82,000 | $91,580 |
| 3 | Craig Smith | United Kingdom | € 48,000 | $53,608 |
| 4 | Leendert Marcus | Netherlands | € 38,000 | $42,440 |
| 5 | Oskar Wedde | Norway | € 32,440 | $36,230 |
| 6 | Pasquale Gregorio | Italy | € 26,000 | $29,038 |
| 7 | Peter de Bruin | Netherlands | € 20,000 | $22,337 |
| 8 | Dario Marinelli | Italy | € 14,000 | $15,636 |
Three quick eliminations
Dario Marinelli was the shortest coming into the day after a huge setup at the end of Day 3 and had the most live poker experience of the bunch. Unfortunately for him, he was the first player to leave the final table stage after first having doubled up with pocket kings against Sujeta’s ace-four but soon after was sent away when he ran his pocket queens into the kings of Pasquale Gregorio.
Peter de Bruin shoved with eight-seven suited and was called by fellow countryman Leendert Marcus who held jack-ten. De Bruin flopped a pair of eights but Marcus turned the higher pair and improved it to trips on the river to send De Bruin and his rail back to his hotel with €20,000. Gregorio was next to go in sixth place for €26,000 when Sujeta had flopped a straight against his middle pair. When all the chips went in on the river, Gregorio saw his call wasn’t good as he was sent away from the final table.
The final stages
Five-handed play lasted almost two hours with Marcus taking the chip lead away from Dan when he flopped a set and improved to a full house on the river while Dan had turned a flush. But Dan grabbed it back when he caught Marcus’ bluff. Oskar Wedde was pretty card dead all day long and was bleeding chips away when he finally got his stack in with ace-nine. Craig Smith picked up ace-queen to make the call and flopped the queen immediately. The turn brought a flush draw to Wedde but he bricked the river to leave the tournament in fifth place.
Sujeta started his run to the finish line with slow and steady play, first, he doubled through Marcus with jacks and flopped a set. He then won a few pots against Dan to take over the chip lead and never looked back. The biggest pot of the day also went to Sujeta when he held jack-eight in a four-way limped pot. He hit trips on an ace-eight-eight flop while both Dan who held ace-five and Marcus who held ace-nine had two pair. It was checked through to the nine on the turn which now gave Smith two pair as he had nine-six in his hand and Marcus the higher two pair than he had flopped. Marcus’ bet was called by both Sujeta and Dan. The river was a seven and Sujeta’s bet was called by both of his opponents for Sujeta to scoop a pretty big pot to give him almost 60% of all the chips in play.
Thirty minutes later, Marcus was eliminated when he shoved his ace-nine into the ace-queen of Dan and got no help from the board. Marcus came to Malta without any intention of playing the event but after a fruitful night on the roulette table, he decided to fire a bullet on Day 1c and made that last-minute decision a successful one as he will be taking €38,000 back to the Netherlands. Smith and his rambunctious rail were sent down in the elevator to collect €48,000 for finishing in third place when he called Sujeta’s shove on the river when the board read trey-four-ten-eight-seven as he held two pair with the ten-seven. But Sujeta had a straight with the jack-nine to go heads-up.
Heads-up play only lasted twenty minutes. Dan was working on a comeback when he flopped a full house but ended up check-shoving with a flush draw on the jack-five-queen-ten board. Sujeta had turned a straight and that held when the seven was dealt on the river to end the tournament. Sujeta celebrated and Dan quickly left the venue while Sujeta went through the motions that come with winning a tournament.
This concludes the PokerNews live reporting at The Malta Poker Festival for 2019. Thank you for following along with the updates and see you at the next event.
