Robert Bostock Leads Baker's Dozen into MPNPT Sunny Beach Main Event Final Day
United Kingdom's Robert Bostock heads into the final day of the €150,000 guaranteed MPNPT Sunny Beach €550 Main Event with a massive chip lead with 2,343,000 in chips.
Bostock, who qualified into the event through Grosvenor Poker, enters the day with more chips than his two nearest competitors with Bulgaria's Borislav Yosifov bagging 1,113,000 in chips and Estonia's Dmitri Fomitsa bagging 1,097,000 in chips.
The Brit is in an excellent position to notch up his biggest live tournament cash to date with the winner slated to walk away with €35,000. A top three finish will eclipse his previous highest score a decade ago when he shipped an event in his home country for £9,400.
Day 2 began with 135 hopefuls vying for a deep run, including 129 players that bagged chips during the two opening flights along with another six players that opted to buy-in before the start of Day 2 when late-registration closed.
Players were eliminated at a fast and furious pace and by the time the dinner break approached play was hand-for-hand with 36 players remaining and 35 guaranteed a minimum payout of €1,200.
After 22 hands, Lithuania's Paulius Sabaliauskas called off a short-stack from the big blind with jack-eight and was severely outmatched against the pocket aces held by Bulgaria’s Plamen Todorov.
Sabaliauskas didn't walk away empty-handed. The Lithuanian was surprised by the event organizers with a seat valued at €550 to the Battle of Malta Main Event in October which boasts a massive €1 million guarantee.
The chip leader entering the day in Swedish Paf Poker qualifier and MPNPT regular Mikael Grönvik didn't fare nearly as well as he lost pot after pot and failed to cash.
Perhaps the biggest story of the day surrounded Bulgaria's Iva Lazarova. She began the day in the middle of the pack before her chip stack soared early. However, fortunes turned for the Bulgarian and she found herself with less than a big blind on the bubble.
About a dozen hands into hand-for-hand play, the Bulgarian got it all-in with ace-nine on the bubble and needed help against an opponent’s ace-queen. However, a nine spiked the turn and Lazarova’s tournament life was saved.
The dinner break appeared to revive Lazarova as shortly after play returned she won pot after pot and ran her stack up to 1.1 million in chips, which at the time was a second-place stack. However, she lost a few pots near the end of the day, including one where her pocket sixes didn't get there against pocket sevens and she bagged an eighth-place stack of 501,000 to end the day.
Main Event Final Day Players
| Player | Country | Qualifier | Table | Seat | Chips |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Galin Panayotov | Bulgaria | 1 | 1 | 434,000 | |
| Stelian Kukuchev | Bulgaria | 1 | 2 | 608,000 | |
| Risto Aho | Finland | OlyBet | 1 | 4 | 282,000 |
| Martin Stoev | Bulgaria | 1 | 5 | 379,000 | |
| Robert Bostock | United Kingdom | Grosvenor Poker | 1 | 7 | 2,343,000 |
| Martin Nikolov | Bulgaria | 1 | 9 | 402,000 | |
| Borislav Yosifov | Bulgaria | 2 | 1 | 1,113,000 | |
| Tihomir Ochkov | Bulgaria | 2 | 2 | 830,000 | |
| Iva Lazarova | Bulgaria | 2 | 3 | 501,000 | |
| Simeon Spasov | Bulgaria | 2 | 4 | 962,000 | |
| Philipp Anger | Germany | Betsafe Poker | 2 | 5 | 386,000 |
| Dmitri Fomitsa | Estonia | 2 | 7 | 1,097,000 | |
| David Longmate | United Kingdom | 2 | 9 | 262,000 |
Saturday also witnessed the MPNPT €150 Platinum Poker Cup draw more than 180 entries featuring a healthy €6,350 top prize, along with a coveted MPNPT trophy to match that of Ivan Dryanovski, who took down the MPNPT €220 Super Knockout event for €2,204 plus bounties on Friday night.
Our final 13 Main Event players competing on Sunday will first be whittling themselves down to a final table before battling it out for the title. A feature table and the final table will be streamed live on Twitch and on Facebook from 2:30 p.m. EEST with hole cards displayed and expert commentary.
You can also follow all the action live on the MPNPT blog, right from the shuffle-up-and-deal at 2 p.m EEST.
