The €2,000 no limit hold'em event is approaching level four and 196 players are registered. Although field sizes are slightly down across the festival, the quality of players ensures everywhere one turns, in any event, there are familiar faces and intriguing battles.

Ole Schemion is in the 2K, two seats down from David Peters, who won the High Roller here last season. Yury Gulyy, who has a runner up finish from this trip already, is also there.

Jason Wheeler is playing, having hung around to the deep stages of the €10,000 Single-Day High Roller last night, then jumped into the Main Event today, and then busting. Paul Newey and Dermot Blain are on the same table.

Anton Wigg, Anatoly Filatov, Sergio Aido, Jonathan Little, Jeff Madsen, Martin Finger, Ben Pollak, Christopher Frank and David Yan are playing. And there's a return to action for Shola Akindele Deadman and her husband, Simon. They're on opposite sides of the room, so haven't had to play any pots against one another yet.

That is a two-day event and they'll play eight one-hour levels today. Registration closes at around 9pm local time.

There are four players left in the 10-Game, with Theo Jorgensen and, as you could guess from the list above, Ben Pollak now out. Adam Owen is the chip leader as they play through their bubble.

In the neighbouring area of the tournament room, Marcin Horecki and Martin Staszko headline the €500 Quintuple Draw event. There are 13 players from 18 starters and these events are being played out in a thoroughly positive spirit.

Dealers and floor staff alike are relishing the chance to get involved in these unfamiliar games (quintuple draw is a rotation between A-5 Triple Draw, 2-7 Triple Draw, Badugi, Badacey and Badeucey) and everybody seems to be working out the subtleties as they go along.

Upstairs in the main tournament room, the €1,000 Turbo is in its death throes. There were five left at time of writing, but I'm almost certain it will be all over by now. It took a while to confirm it (I was doubting my own sketchy counting skills) but the five-handed chip leader only had a little more than ten big blinds and somebody was all in literally every hand. Love these turbos.

We'll have the result soon.

Everything about EPT Malta is on the main EPT Malta page. More specifically, all the hand-by-hand coverage of the Main Event is on the Main Event page and everything from the side events is on the side events page.

No really, begin plotting your own bid for EPT glory by downloading the PokerStars client and having a crack. Follow this EPT event via the EPT app. There you will get all the latest news, chip counts and payouts. You can download it on Android or IOS

If you worry that you give too much information away at the poker table, then take a leaf from Niall Farrell's book. The Scot seems to have this part of his game cracked.

To watch Farrell play a hand, even a hand in which his tournament life is at stake, is to watch a man at peace with the moment, at peace with himself.

Niall Farrell

It seems he has a trick.

Before that though there was the evidence, a hand in which he effectively knocked two players out of the main event, and took his stack up to more than 180,000.

There was action before Farrell pushed his chips forward. Ioannis Angelou Konstas was all-in and then Farrell shoved. Behind him was Andreas Samuelsson, who already had 17,000 chips in the pot but was now left deciding whether to call or cut his losses. A long pause ensued, during which Farrell sat with his chin in his hand, looking, well, perfectly calm.

Eventually Samuelsson called, turning over pocket tens. Konstas in seat nine, who had been doing his best Niall Farrell impression up to now, turned over ace-king, leaving Farrell himself to turn over his aces.

The board caused few problems for Farrell, with only a king on the turn to raise the pulse. He didn't even blink when the chips were pushed his way.

Konstas was gone with a "good luck gents", while Samuelsson, who got a good amount of sympathy for his call, was reduced to 2,000 chips, deposited into Farrell's stack moments later, his queen-nine topped by Farrell's ace-jack.

"You're the hardest person to read," said Charlie Farrell, grinning, who had been sitting between Konstas and Samuelsson. "You just don't give a sh** if you're staying or going to the bar."

Farrell allowed himself a smile, and agreed. "The worst possible outcome is a chop!"

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The numbers are in. A total of 651 players entered the EPT Malta Main Event (including one player who decided not to show up). That was split between a field of 184 on Day 1A, with a further 460 players on Day 1B.

The extra six? They bought in prior to play beginning today, skipping the eight levels of graft yesterday and leaping straight in to level 9. They were Semin Topalovic, Jussi Nevanlinna, Ambrose Ng, Jason Wheeler, Rufat Mahmudov and of course Dzmitry Urbanovich, who you can watch right now gracing the EPT Live feature table.

In terms of money that makes the prize pool €3,157,350, with the top 95 players finishing in the money.

What does that mean for the winner? Well a great Saturday night for one thing. First prize pays €602,400.

You can find the full payout list by clicking here, and we'll be filling that in as results start to come in at some point tomorrow evening.

Before you do that, here's the events' nationalities list.

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The start of Day 2 is always an interesting time. If you read the seat draw before you sit down, all your opponents are there to see, unlike the unknown table element of a start of Day 1.

The table dynamics are also interesting. No history (unless they've played each other before) has been made so you have to monitor stack sizes and previous results to help you when trying to piece together all that imperfect information when involved in a hand.

We always look at the seat draw before Day 2 begins to see if any interesting tables stand out and if any of them can be classified as a "Table of Death." If there is one, and it won't break too early, then the folks over at ETPLive will probably nab it for the live stream that's started today over on PokerStars.tv.

Looking through today's seat draw, Table 11 stood out as interesting one, and not because it's a "Table of Death," more for the mixture of characters contained within. Seven different nationalities, six qualifiers, an EPT Main Event champion, an EPT High Roller champion, a WSOP bracelet winner and a Polish rap star could be found in one shape or another. Okay, maybe we (at least) need to define it as a "Table of potential uncomfortable situations." After watching for much of the opening level, it was certainly uncomfortable for a few, and not necessarily the ones you might expect.

For starters, Andrew Chen busted before we arrived, less than 90 seconds into the day. That might be some sort of record. When a really good player like Chen (he was the EPT High Roller champion by the way) busts from a table as tricky as this, you hope no sharks swim into the gap. Not today. Not at this table. Giada Fang from Team PokerStars Pro Online approached, fin (media ID card) sticking out from in between her rack of chips, and took the empty seat. At least, for the sake of the recreational players at the table, she only arrived with around 25,000 chips.

There were two Swedes at the table in the shape of Kent Ludmark and Peter Eichhardt. The latter made an EPT final table in Baden back in Season 3 but seemed to drift back into the shadows in recent years, before remerging with a bang at EPT Barcelona, just missing out on the Main Event final table with his 10th place finish. Lundmark has happy memories from Barcelona too, after he won the EPT there back in Season 7. Lundmark opened the first hand we witnessed but folded to a three-bet from his more senior countryman.

Bryn Kenney has a fierce reputation in the poker world, both live and online. Natural talent oozes from his pores but it was he who had the most uncomfortable level (bar Chen) and it started when Lundmark three-bet him off the first hand he played. The very next hand, Kenney won those chips back, but off Wojciech Lozowski, the Polish rap star we mentioned earlier. One might put money on him struggling in this company but he proved that theory wrong but being one of the biggest winners.

The hand after he folded to Kenney's aggression, he won a decent pot back off the American. They were in the blinds and there was no raise before an [Ac][6d][5h] flop appeared. Kenney led for 1,300 there and 2,700 on the [ah] turn before he checked the [5s] river. Lozowski called both times and then bet 7,000 on the river. Kenney scratched his head and called but mucked upon seeing [ad][9d].

Lozowski was on a roll after he won the very next pot. Eichhardt raised to 2,000 from under the gun and Eichhardt was the only caller from the small blind. Both players checked the [9d][8c][qd] flop before Lozowski led for 3,600 and 4,800 on the [2d][kc] turn and river. Eichhardt called both times but Lozowski had turned a set of deduces and happily added more chips to his stack.

Two hands later, Lozowski made quicker work winning his third pot of the day. Diogo Cardoso opened from early position and was called by Joao Ribeiro along with Kenney before Lozowski squeezed to 7,200. All three opponents folded.

Kenney folded there but thing went really badly for him the next two hands as he doubled up Akim Aouine and Cardoso one hand after the other. He raised to 2,000 from mid position and Aouine defended his big blind to see a [2d][7s][8d] flop appear. Kenney continued for 1,800 and was check-raised to 4,000. He set Aouine all in for his remaining 12,000 and Frenchman snap called all in with [ad][7d] for the nut flush draw. Kenney was in bad shape with [qd][jd] for a smaller flush draw and he paid his opponent off after the board ran out [ah][6d].

Thomas Denis opened to 1,700 from under the gun the next hand before Kenney three-bet to 4,600 from a couple of seats along. The action folded around to Cardoso in the big blind and he immediately moved all in for 33,800 after looking at his cards. Denis folded but Kenney called after some thought.

Cardoso: [ad][kc]
Kenney: [as][qh]

The board ran [6h][js][4h][6s][5s] to double up Cardoso.

That was when we left the table. Kenney had lost two-thirds of his starting stack so it'll be interesting if he manages to stop the slide during the second level of the day and will Lozowski continue to mix it well surrounded by pros?

Everything about EPT Malta is on the main EPT Malta page. More specifically, all the side event coverage can be found here.

Begin plotting your own bid for EPT glory by downloading the PokerStars client and having a crack. Follow this EPT event via the EPT app. There you will get all the latest news, chip counts and payouts. You can download it on Android or IOS