Lorenzo Di Blasi is the EAPT Malta champion (€50,000)

The first season of the relaunched EAPT is slowly approaching its end. Redesigned last summer to focus on mini-series in popular tourist destinations, the festival has already passed through six cities: Rozvadov, Barcelona, Milan, Madrid, Bucharest and Bratislava. Finally, in April, the series came to Malta to draw five cups and nearly three hundred thousand euros in guaranteed prize money over five days of play in St. Julian's.

The majority of this amount (€200,000) was distributed to the €560 Main Event. You could start your journey to the beautiful Mediterranean resort of Portomaso right from home: for the last two months, all GGPoker rooms in the GGPoker network have been running satellites where you could win a trip to EAPT Malta. The trip included not only the buy-in to the main tournament, but also hotel accommodations, so that a player who was planning a vacation in Malta didn't have to waste any time looking for a comfortable place to stay.

After four starting flights, the Main Event had a total of 660 players, raising the guarantee to €313,500. As always in multi-table tournaments, the main prizes started at the final table. The players who made it to the final nine secured a nice payout of €5,000. Besides the obvious desire to win, players had a secondary goal. Not only was there a significant amount of prize money for the top five finishers, but there was also an entry package to the EAPT Grand Final.

Scheduled for early May, the Grand Final is a truly massive series. More than $10,000,000 in guaranteed prize pools, including a $2,000,000 guarantee to the EAPT Grand Final, will be up for grabs at the luxurious Merit Royal Diamond Hotel & Spa casino-hotel from May 1-12. That's exactly what was included in the bonus packages for the top 5 players at EAPT Malta, and the trip also includes a $1,100 Luxon Pay Mystery Bounty buy-in ($1,000,000 GTD), travel, transfers and accommodations at the five-star Merit Crystal Cove.

Which makes it even more surprising that the EAPT Malta Main Event was stopped in the middle of the battle for a trip to Cyprus. Players who made the top 6 decided to split the prize pool. The negotiations resulted in the following figures:

- Thiago Serrazina of Portugal took home €11,600;

- Marco Vanini from Italy was €16,000 richer;

- Fabio Peluso of Italy added €23,000 to his prize pool;

- Germany's Ashraf Khader took home €33,200;

- Lorenzo Di Blasi bid €50,225.

For Lorenzo Di Blasi, it was a series named after him. The Italian player started the series by beating 390 opponents in the €120 Flight to MPP warm-up event. He earned €8,500 for his win and his first EAPT Grand Final package. A few days later, he was already leading the final table of the Main Event. In the top 7, Di Blasi won a key coin flip against Ukrainian Sergey Alarika (Queens vs. Ace-King) and never let go of the lead. Di Blasi started heads-up play against Ashraf Khader with 75% of the chips. No wonder it ended well for him. In the last hand of the tournament, Khader went all-in for 25 big blinds with A 9 , and Di Blasi called with A K . Already on the flop the German player could only count on a miraculous rescue: Q K 5 , but the turn and river were not two nines.

Lorenzo Di Blasi became the EAPT Malta Champion after winning two of the series' biggest tournaments. Lorenzo also won two tickets to the EAPT Grand Final, taking him to Cyprus in three weeks. "I am more than happy," said Lorenzo moments after lifting his second trophy in a week. "Last week I won the first trophy of my career. I never thought I could win even one, so to win two tournaments in one festival is incredible".