THE DAILY SCOOP – The Battle of Malta – Weekend 2
The Battle of Malta – Weekend 2
The low din of metal striking metal assaults your ears as you slowly awaken from a restless slumber. Taking a moment to realize that you are not somewhere familiar and the dreams of your soft pillow and comfortable bed are distant memories, you take a glimpse around the dust covered tent you currently call home. You look around realizing how many of your compatriots have already fallen but you are still there and you must fight on. You stare into the dull light shining on your visage and your eyes slowly focus. Finally focusing on the only point of concern, you see Ace-Ace. Pocket Rockets, American Airlines, the Twin Towers. You reach down and grab your weapon, the mouse and move All-In as you continue your assault in the Battle of Malta Online Tournament Series!
We are just over half-way through the Online Battle of Malta Poker Tournament Series at GGPoker. Over €12 Million has been won from just €10 Million in guarantees. This weekend GGPoker plays host to with another €5.5 Million guaranteed plus another 32 seats guaranteed to the Live Battle of Malta in October.
#8: Iron Throne Marathon
Event #8, the Iron Throne Marathon was a €110 buy-in NLHE tournament offering a heafty €125,000 guarantee. 1,449 players joined the festivities, creating a total prize pool of €146,638.80. Re-buys were available for this tournament for the first 4 hours of the event which took just over 10 hours to complete. When it completed, ‘Songonku’ stood victorious having earned €20,213.04 for the victory.
#9: Bounty for the Queen
With the marathon event for the Iron Throne being completed, it was time to find the Queen. This €315 Bounty tournament offered a €250,000 guarantee and brought 1,044 players to search for the queen and claim the biggest bounty. Running for just under 9 hours, ‘geladinhaRLS’ was the last to fall as ‘ROLLINGDR0NE’ was the last player standing, earning €34,663.55 for the win including €22,393.13 in earned bounties.
The Side Events
Through the week there were 39 other events associated with the Battle of Malta Online Poker Series, too many to review here but if you are curious, you can always take a look at PokerCraft in the GGPoker client for all the details. We will look at the 2 biggest daily guarantees from the week, the Bounty Hunters Malta €52.50 and the Bounty Hunters HR Malta €525. These events offer guarantees of at least €100,000 and continue to run daily for the duration of the online poker tournament series.
Monday’s pair of events both offered guarantees of €120,000. The tournaments saw 3,184 and 281 players respectively enter, creating prize pools of €159,200 for the lower buy-in and €140,500 for the High Rollers. At the end of the events, it was ‘Im_goodman’ who won the €52.50 event for €14,772.55 and ‘Maskvv’ who claimed victory in the €525 buy-in event, earning €23,832.81.
Tuesday saw a small decrease in the participants of the €52.50 event, with 3,143 players joining, while the High Roller event increased by more than 15% creating a total field of 327 participants.The tournaments, which both offered a €120,000 guarantee, took approximately 8 hours to complete. The High Roller event saw a prize pool of €163,500 with ‘cepsil304’ earning the biggest share with €20,273.48 in bounties and a total of €30,649.61 for the win. In the €52.50 buy-in, it was ‘Duong Hoang’ earning the victory for a total prize of €14,699.66.
The Wednesday Bounty Hunters Malta €52.50 collected a total of 3,165 players and created a prize pool of €158,250, beating the €120,000 guarantee. It took almost 8.75 hours for ‘TuMbAk’ to take the championship and earn €14,050.36 for the work. Meanwhile, in the High Rollers, only 288 players signed up, creating a prize pool of €144,000, exceeding the €110,000 guarantee. Taking just over 8 hours to complete, it was ‘TheGreatAmu’ defeating ‘Limiteddd’ to earn the €29,170.39 top prize, including €19,574.24 in bounties.
The Thursday editions of these two tournaments both hosted guarantees of €120,000 and attracted the biggest player counts of the week in these events. The High Roller version attracted 380 players creating a prize pool of €190,000 while the €52.50 buy-in had 3,302 players join creating a prize pool of €165,100. The High Roller event was won by ‘Nisiti’ who earned €32,820.15 while the €52.50 saw ‘Iazrinnnn’ end victorious earning €12,351.42.
Other big winners in the Battle of Malta Online Poker Tournament series this week include ‘BDPoker69’, ‘SenvintySync’, ‘LMFWY’ and ‘onyvapapaa’, all of whom earned over €10,000 in their tournaments.
Heading to Malta – Seats and Packages
In addition to all of the tournament excitement above, there were more than 2 dozen tournaments with guaranteed seats or packages to the Live Battle of Malta Main Event. This live tournament series offers some of the best mid-stakes live tournament action in Europe. Taking place in October on the beautiful Mediterranean island of Malta, the Main Event is offering a €1,000,000 guaranteed prize pool and GGPoker is hosting daily satellite tournaments to the event. The ‘Road to Malta’ tournaments guarantee seats daily with buy-ins as low as €55 for a seat only and €125 for the whole package, not to mention the various sub-satellites where a player could win a seat for as little as €6. These tournaments normally have small fields and take less than 2 hours to complete. A hearty congratulations to each of the 45 players that have already won a package and the additional 101 that have won their seats. We look forward to seeing you in Malta and hope you find continued success.
Coming Up Next…
The next main events in the Battle of Malta are event #10: Three-Cities Challenge €330 (3-Stack) on July 23rd with a €150,000 guarantee, event #11: Grand Harbour Superstack €550 offering a €500,000 guarantee on July 24th and event #12 Siege of Malta Bounty MILLION$ Final Day and its €1,000,000 guarantee on July 24th. Events #10 and #11 have satellites running constantly through the day, while Event #12 has multiple Day 1’s available and satellites into the Day 1’s.
One more thing of note. Event #18. The main event of the Battle of Malta offers a €2.5 Million guarantee, including a top prize (at the time of writing this) of almost €400,000 and a seat to the Battle of Malta. With dozens of Day 1’s still available and a robust satellite structure into the Day 1’s this will be a battle to remember.
Good luck at the tables!