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Friday, December 4, 2015

EPT12 Malta: Child's play for Giulio Spampinato. Literally.

There's one obvious beneficiary of the departures of Sam Greenwood in sixth and Rainer Kempe in fifth, and that's Giulio Spampinato.

The Italian was the short stack at the start of play with 19 big blinds. And guess what, he's still the short stack. But is somehow he's looking at a minimum pay out today of €203,640, and not the €125,660 he might have expected at 1pm today.

Giulio Spampinato (taken yesterday)

But actually there are others who benefit from Spampinato's ascendancy, not least his descendants.

In the player profiles we mentioned how the Italian hopes to spend his winning, setting up home and starting a family with his wife Daniela.
But wait. Is fourth place money really enough?

According to, well let's be honest, the internet, it costs the average middle income family $245,000 to raise a child from birth to the age of 18 (although that depends on where you live). As any parent knows the cost of this can be enormous: Halloween costumes bought last minute on eBay alone can set you back hundreds over the course of a single childhood.

In Europe this amounts to €222,545. That means should he finish fourth Spampinato is still 19 grand short.

So he's not quite there yet. But then Saturday's child works hard for a living. Perhaps Spampinato Junior could start work at 16?

Either way it's a great result for the Italian (and his wife) who now lives in Malta. For the record third place money will cover all the bills.

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Stephen Bartley is a staff writer for the PokerStars Blog.