The second starting day of the inaugural €800 Mega Poker Series Main Event at the Casino Portomaso on Malta attracted a total field of 168 entries and at the end of eight 60-minute levels, a new trio was atop the overall leader board with 113 further players bagging up chips towards Day 2. Salvatore Ritrovato (339,600) edged out Filip Szeszula (337,100) and Przemyslav Klejnowski (329,600), Day 1a chip leader Daniel Jarosch (327,500) fell back to fourth place as a result. While Szeszula and Klehnowski had been running hot for most of the day, the Italian showed up out of the nowhere at the very end.
According to the blogger colleague from AcesBook, who caught up with Ritrovato after the end of play and it was a massive hero call that got him into the leading position. The Italian three-bet from the small blind with 
and made a continuation bet of 7,200 on a flop. His opponent called and raised the turn from 14,800 to 38,000. Ritrovato made the call and the river completed the board. The Italian faced a hefty bet of 86,000 and asked his opponent whether or not he would show in case of a fold, as soon as he was offered one card to be shown Ritrovato made the call and his opponent mucked the cards.
With another 113 players bagging up chips overnight, the returning field for tomorrow including all Day 1a survivors has increased to 165 out of 247 total entries. This is however not the final number yet as all players still have the opportunity to re-enter the competition before the first card is dealt at 14:00 local time. Up to 20 late entrants are expected and they will have a fresh start with 80,000 chips, equaling 40 big blinds for level 9 with blinds at 1,000-2,000 and a running ante of 300. Day 2 will see a total of nine levels on the schedule to finish around approximately one hour after midnight. Once the registration is closed, the official payouts will be announced as well.
Among those familiar names that didn’t bag up chips at the end of Day 1b were Pavel Chalupka, Daniel Burkart, Raffaele Penna, Mohamed Almani and Elena Stover. Adem Marjanovic profited from an early missclick and cruised to to an above-average stack. Other big stacks include MPS serial qualifier Jacek Pustula (186,000), Poker Royale veteran Erwin hammer (184,100), recent EPT Malta 2015 finalist Remi Wyrzykiewicz (183,900), Ivan Sebeledi (183,000) as well as the William Hill Poker qualifiers Tobias Matuschek (173,100) and Natascha Siepmann (171,000). MPS Vienna 2015 runner-up Thomas Jarosch (123,200), Matt Adams (123,000) and Julian Herold (105,000) also made it through to Day 2.
Below is the full set of all important links such as Main Event chip counts, redraws and the final result of the Bounty Side Event. On Friday at 19:00 local time, the two-day €330 NLHE Freezeout Side Event gets underway and there is a €35+5 Turbo Satellite as of 16:00 with single re-entry and three seats guaranteed.
Main Event Day 2 chip leader Salvatore Ritrovato:
MPS Malta Main Event Day 1B final Chip Counts
MPS Malta Main Event Day 1 final Chip Counts (combined)
MPS Malta Main Event Day 2 Redraw by Chips
