Poker news | Apr 08, 2022
Oliver Hutchins Wins PPC Malta Main Event
By RTR Alex
The partypoker Players Championship (PPC) Malta has come to an end with Oliver Hutchins taking home the title in the Main Event.
Hutchins won his €550 seat after winning a satellite event online at partypoker, which cost him just €109. He was awarded with a ticket to Malta and turned the satellite victory into a career-best €74,000 Main Event title win. He flew from the United Kingdom to the sunny island to defeat a field of 847-opponents and best runner-up Damir Savio in a heads-up battle.
Before this win, Hutchins had only banked a total $25,023 from live poker tournaments. His previous career-best came with his runner-up prize at the Pokerstars London Festival, where he hit the rail for $16,686. Banking almost five times that with his latest tournament appearance has shot his name into stardom with the poker world expecting great things from the up-and-comer.
PPC Malta Main Event Payouts
| Place | Player | Country | Prize |
| 1 | Oliver Hutchins | United Kingdom | €74,000.00 |
| 2 | Damir Savio | Croatia | €58,000.00 |
| 3 | Jingchun Yu | China | €31,000.00 |
| 4 | Massimo Rossi | Italy | €21,000.00 |
| 5 | Wouter Schuurbiers | Belgium | €16,000.00 |
| 6 | Federico Cirillo | Italy | €13,000.00 |
| 7 | Federico Petruzzelli | Italy | €10,000.00 |
| 8 | Bradley Gudgeon | United Kingdom | €8,000.00 |
| 9 | Guiseppe DiBella | Italy | €6,400.00 |
Final Table Action
April 4th marked the final day of the event where the last nine contestants locked in a guaranteed €6,400. First to land in the money was Giuseppe DiBella, who challenged the Queen-Jack of Federico Petruzzelli with just Five-Four and a short stack.
DiBella was followed by Bradley Gudgeon, who certainly stole some of Hutchin's thunder with his success story. Although he may have been sent home in 8th place, Gudgeon can't be disappointed after turning his €11 satellite entry into an €8,000 score. Not a bad return on investment...
Seventh place came with the first five-figure prize - Federico Petruzzelli, left the table with €10,000 in his pocket, falling to the Ace-King of Damir Savio.
What followed was a double elimination from Massimo Rossi who sent home Wouter Schuurbeirs and Federico Cirillo with his pair of aces. This gave Rossi a sizable stack with just four players left, but he failed to put the chips to use as he shoved his last ten big blinds with Ace-Ten and fell to the Queen-Jack of Jingchun Yu.
Yu quickly ran into trouble after shoving 21 big blinds with King-Four against the King-Queen of Hutchins. Both paired their kings on the turn, but Hutchins hit a queen on the river to put him heads-up against Savio.
After delivering the knock-out blow to Yu, Hutchins entered the contest with a 16,100,000 to 9,400,000 chip lead over Savio.
Savio struggled for a while but did claim the advantage for a brief moment, before falling behind again as Hutchins regained the lead. With Savio down to less than 6.5 big blinds, the final hand of the PPC Malta Main Event was in play. Savio moved all in with King-Nine but Hutchins made the call with Ace-Eight. A simple queen-high on the board gave Hutchins the title and secured the top prize and €73,891 in profit from his satellite buy-in