Juan Pardo graced our headlines less than a month ago when he took down the PokerStars WCOOP (World Championship of Online Poker) $25,000 Super High Roller. Playing under his online alter ego 'Malakastyle', Pardo pocketed $495,333 for his efforts.
Yesterday, the Spaniard was one of 25 players in the mix on Day 2 of a scheduled three-day Super High Roller at EPT Cyrpus. Pardo, along with others in the field like Adrian Mateos, Sam Grafton, and Mikita Badziakouski, was gunning for one of the six paid spots.
There was only pain for Paulius Plausinaitis, fresh off his $25k High Roller win and hoping to go two for two in the high rollers, following his exit eighth place.
Pardo then survived his own all-in-and-at-risk scare on the bubble before Mikalai Vaskaboinikau took up the mantle of bubble boy, finishing in seventh place, just before the money.
Vaskaboinikau's exit guaranteed the remaining six players a $156,200 pay day, but with $769,860 sitting up top there was much more to play for. And play, they did. The final six decided to keep playing rather than bag and return the next day for the final table.
No time for rest, play on
This worked to Pardo's good fortune as his hot streak continued. First, he cracked Zhou’s kings with a turned set to place the Chinese professional on life support. Teun Mulder would finish the job shortly afterwards.
Neither Sturm nor Grafton could truly recover from short-stack status, Pardo cracking the German’s aces and then picking off Grafton just as the Englishman was showing signs of recovery.
Three-handed play took the tournament into the wee hours of the morning and it was Pardo once again who delivered a knockout blow. Mulder's shove from the small blind saw Pardo put the chips in, this time with the worst of it, only to river the flush.
Teun Mulder: A♦️️ 10♦️️
Juan Pardo: A❤️ 9❤️
Flop: 10❤️ 8❤️ 9♠
Turn: 8♦️️
River: J❤️
Heads-up saw the Spanish duo make a deal to lessen any unforeseen blow and, although Delgado managed to close the wide gap in stacks, Pardo eventually prevailed for a late-night victory and his first EPT High Roller win.
$50k Super High Roller results
| Seat | Player | Chips |
| 1 | Juan Pardo | $688,560* |
| 2 | Vicente Delgado | $583,400* |
| 3 | Teun Mulder | $345,900 |
| 4 | Sam Grafton | $256,600 |
| 5 | Leon Sturm | $200,800 |
| 6 | Quan Zhou | $156,200 |
EPT Cyprus Main Event kicks off
While the high rollers were doing their thing, the rest of EPT Cyprus had eyes only for the Main Event, with Jennifer Shahade bringing her team to town.
Serbia’s Milos Skrbic topped the day 1A chip counts, closely followed by Dario Sammartino and PokerStars’ ambassador Parker Talbot, with man-of-the-moment Benny Glaser and 2019 WSOP Main Event champ Hossein Ensan also among those finding a bag.
Niklas Astedt, Andy Black, and Dietrich Fast are among those currently playing in day 1B and late registration remains open until the start of Day 2.
The PokerStars live stream starts tomorrow at 11.30am CEST, with the stellar team of James Hartigan and Joe Stapleton, backed up by names like Maria Ho and Griffin Benger. The live stream will follow the action all the way to the champion being crowned on Sunday, October 22.
