2024 The Festival Malta Day 2

Just over a quarter of the 120 entrants on Day 1b of The Hendon Mob Championship made it through to the second day of the tournament. In total there are now 44 players who will be returning on Wednesday for Day 2, 31 from today and 13 from Day 1a. There is still one more starting day for others to have a shot at joining them.

David Lappin did make it to the end of the day this time, posting the fourth largest stack of the flight on 258,000. Maltese all-time money leader Joe Grech has bagged the second biggest stack of the day on 275,000. However the chip leader with 276,000 is Malta Poker Festival supremo Ivonne Montealegre, originally from Costa Rica, but now a Maltese resident.

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The H.O.R.S.E.S have returned to the stables now. Well, the eight who made it through to the end of Day 1b have gone back to their stables, while the other ten entrants who failed to progress are on their way to the glue factory.

Only one player managed to build a three-figure stack in this starting day. That honour went to Swede Mats Karlsson, who bagged up 105,000 and will be in third place when play resumes for the final day of the event on Tuesday. Ruud Alsemgeest from Netherlands posted the second biggest stack on 96,500. Siarhei Narohzny ended the day in 3rd place with 90,000.

Scott Kenyon didn’t quite make it, exiting in 11th place, however Eva Jiretorn secured her place in Day 2 with 30,500 and so did Franke, who will resume tomorrow with 42,500.

The second day of The Festival in Malta is drawing to a close. Both The Hendon Mob Championship and Mixed Games Main Event are in their penultimate levels of the day.

The H.O.R.S.E.S Mixed Game Main Event has eleven players still in from a field of 18 starters. Still left in the tournament is Eva “Chic” Jiretorn, who is an accomplished chess player as well as an astute poker player. She’s on her second bullet of the day right now.

Sharing a table with Eva is Scott Kenyon and Franke, making for a lively environment when it comes to table talk. One thing seems a little different about Franke today and its taken me most of the day to realise, but I honestly don’t think I’ve seen Franke with a cup of tea in his hand all day. This must be a coffee day instead.

Meanwhile on the other table, Siarhei ‘The Machine’ Narohzny has built a sizeable stack. Play will resume on Tuesday at 3pm.

The Hendon Mob Championship ended up with 120 entries today and there are 41 players left with 45 minutes left to play for the day. There were 42 players, but I just spotted Dara O’Kearney heading sharply out the door while simultaneously hearing a dealer shout ‘seat open’. His Unibet Poker colleague David Lappin is still in, but the large stack he built earlier in the day has now suffered some erosion.

Other players still in the field include Scotsman William Lynch, Maltese Joe Grech and Barry Reitmeijer from Netherlands. 

The Sviten Special still has eleven players left and is going to be a late finish. Gia Carnestrom is the overwhelming chip leader at this point, with local Antoine Degiorgio still in the hunt.

There is also a Main Event satellite taking place which had 52 entries, generating five seats plus €370 for 6th. There are still 14 players battling it out.

This is the final post of the day from the floor, however I will update chip counts here later this evening. It’s still early days for this Festival Series event, but it’s shaping up nicely. Tomorrow the day starts with the first flight of the Main Event. See you tomorrow!

Both the bounties have now been won in The Hendon Mob Championship. The first to go was Hans Kleinsman, who exited in a fairly standard race with AT versus AQ. He was taken out by Emil Simonea, who wins a €250 seat into the next THMC event at The Festival in Bratislava.

Andreas ‘Wiseguy’ Hoglund was the second to go, in the latter stages of level 10. He had been whittled down to just 1.5 big blinds and went all in blind. He was called by Didier Darracq in the big blind and looked to be in good shape with 8-7 offsuit versus Didier’s 3-2 suited. A three on the turn sealed the deal, sending Wiseguy to the rail and Didier to the Slovakian capital.

The tournament is now in level 10 and late registration will close after the next break, which is coming up shortly. The field has grown to 119 players and at this stage the chip leader is David K Lappin. The Unibet Poker sponsored pro was going strongly yesterday, but it all went wrong in level 12 for him. Will he make it further on this bullet?

Joining David Lappin in the field today is fellow Unibet Poker ambassador and Chip Race podcast co-host Dara O’Kearney. Another player competing today is Joe Grech, a Maltese Londoner, who splits his time between the UK and Malta.

I’ve known Joe for as long as I’ve been playing poker, as he’s been a regular on the UK poker scene since the late 1990s, when I first encountered him in Saturday afternoon tournaments at the Vic. A few years later in 2006 he participated in a challenge that I ran while I was poker manager at Blue Square Poker (RIP), which was an experimental sponsorship challenge called ‘The Unusual Suspects‘. Joe didn’t win this challenge, but it was not long after this in 2007 that he took down the €5,000 Diamond Championship at the Euro Finals of Poker in Paris for €132,000. That’s not even his biggest score as he came 2nd in an event at the Belagio in 2005 for $244k.

With over $1.5m in live cashes, Joe is the number one ranked player on the Malta all-time money list on The Hendon Mob database.

There might not be a TV table here today, but we are doing a little experiment, set up by poker streamer and commentator Vaclav ‘Lemon’ Dusek. We are using the usual streaming set up that the live streamers here are using, which is simply a phone on a tripod, with Lemon providing commentary on the action.

There’s no hole cards, but there’s plenty of table talk. And when the players get quiet, rest assured Lemon will fill in the sound gaps with his unique brand of enthusiasm. He’d make a fortune if he could bottle that enthusiasm and resell it.

To watch the stream, check out The Festival’s Twitch Channel

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Despite the confidence of some locals, the Sviten Special did not end up as a record breaker. By the time late registration closed at the end of level 10, the field had grown to 68, but short of the 79 that played last year. The prize pool has now been locked and there is €4,950 up top for the winner and nine players will be paid.

Perhaps the fact that Franke only needed one bullet in this tournament was a contributing factor in the record not being broken. He is still in, but is now jumping back and forth between this and the Mixed Games Main Event, which he bought into at the start, but has only recently sat with a stack.

Frank Visser, Jason Glatzer, Gia Carnestrom, Carlo Braccini and Antoine Degiorgio are all still in contention to be the first event winner of the series.

The Mixed Games Main Event is a quieter heat today, no doubt because of the Sviten also being played at the same time. There are currently 15 players participating in level 7, with no eliminations yet.

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The first heat of the Cash Game challenge is scheduled to begin at 8pm. It’s a €2/€2 No Limit Hold’em session and will last for two hours. Then at 10.30pm there will be a further session at 10.30pm, also a €2/€2 game, but this one is Pot Limit Omaha.

The games will take place downstairs in the main casino, where a table has been reserved for the challenge. Interested players should venture down to the casino and head to the poker area near the buffet. There will be six seats in each game, available on a first come, first served basis.

The player who makes the biggest profit across both of today’s sessions will win a sear in the Grand Final on Sunday, where one player will win a €1,600 package to The Festival in Malta. Full details of the rules of the challenge can be found in Melvin Schroen’s Everything You Need to Know article.

Cash Game Challenge Schedule

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The second starting day of the H.O.R.S.E.S Mixed Games Main event is now in its second level of the day, with eleven players registered. One of these players is Franke, who is multi-tabling, also playing the Sviten Special, in which he now has a pretty big stack. In fact, Franke has yet to take his seat in the Mixed Games Main Event. Things could get interesting later If he maintains a big stack in the Sviten.

Amongst the eleven players currently in the H.O.R.S.E.S is streamer Scott ‘Pokerbrahs’ Kenyon, who is having another crack at the whip today, having been unseated mid way though Day 1a. He is also live streaming today, so if you’d like to follow the action, you can catch him on his Twitch stream.

Also playing today is Siarhei Narohzny, who won the Vamos Open Face Chinese last night.

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The Hendon Mob Championship has added value in the shape of a package worth to attend and take part in The Hendon Mob Cape Town event. However there are also additional prizes today as two of the players in the tournament have had bounties placed on their heads.

Whoever eliminated either of the bounty players will win a €250 entry to The Hendon Mob Championship event in Bratislava in November. So who are these bounty targets?

The first bounty is none other than The Festival Series’ very own Andreas ‘Wiseguy’ Hoglund

And the second is Hans Keinsman, the Head of Social Media at The Hendon Mob.

There are now over 80 players in the tournament, which is on its first break of the day.

Franke’s Flip Flops is a very special event here at The Festival. I might be repeating myself here, but worth mentioning again, as what other poker tour presents a framed pair of their founder’s used flip flops as a trophy? 

The competition got underway on Sunday evening and Andre Sõrm, who won two of the evenings three flips is the first player to book his seat in the 6-max Final Flip on Sunday. He’s used some of this credit to buy into today’s Sviten  Special.

Two hours have been set aside from 9pm this evening for further flips, which cost €25 to enter are rake free and award tournament credit as prizes, which can be used to buy-into events here at The Festival in Malta. Essentially they are rake free satellites, where players can choose which event to use them for.

The Festival Series is known for its atmosphere. There aren’t many rules here and its not a DQ’ing situation, but players are encouraged to be social, share some laughs at the table, perhaps with a cup of tea or two to keep the energy flowing. In his welcome speeches, Franke encourages players to leave their headphones in the hotel room and make the most of enjoy The Festival Series experience as it should be.

Perhaps the unusually peaceful few moments were just players getting settled in to the opening levels of their tournaments and perhaps quite a few of the Sviten Special players are new to the game and need to concentrate while they pick up on how to play.

A player was even overheard asking the dealer “so what exactly are the rules of this game?” as he sat down to take his place.

There are now 55 players who have entered the Sviten Special, with 45 still playing. They are in level 4 now , with still a long way to go until late registration ends. They’re not even had the first break of the day yet. There’s plenty of recognisable faces in the field today including a lot of the usual suspects.

In fact, even as I write this the noise level is returning to its usual level, with conversations sparking up and regular outbursts of laughter lifting the atmosphere in the room once again.

Whoever said that poker is unhealthy pastime? Today’s players are revving up their finely tuned engines for the second starting day of event #1, the €250 The Hendon Mob Championship; and will soon be starting the warm up laps before the race gets into full swing at 4pm.

Yesterday’s first-of-three starting flights had 54 entries, 13 of which have progressed into Day 2, which is not until Wednesday. Dutch player Smaling Kuner was the one who ended the day smelling like roses with a stack of 270,000, over 50,000 ahead of second placed Milan Ljubisic. Full chip counts of the survivors.

This will certainly be a busier starting day than yesterday’s opener, with 20 players already registered 10 minutes before the start of play. Yesterday’s flight started with 12 players.

The first tournament of the day is event #4, the €250 Sviten Special, which has just begun at Portomaso Casino in St Julians, on the main island of the Maltese archipelago, slap bang in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, where the sun shines for over 300 days per year. It’s shining here again now, but not before a brief nautical storm passed over the island, dumping 17m of rain in a short space of time.

In Rozvadov the Sviten Special had 46 entries and last year here in Malta the dame event mustered 79. There is a thriving mixed games community here in Malta and there has been much discussion amongst the local players about whether today’s field will break last year’s record.

This belief is supported by the fact that the casino has been running satellites to this very event and over a dozen players have won seats into it.

One player who firmly believes this one will be the biggest yet is Antoine Degiorgio, who thinks it could even get into treble figures. He’s relying on there being lots of Swedish players rebuying 😉

They are still in level one and already there have been 40 entries and two bust-outs. The player who busted both headed immediately to the registration desk to re-enter. Onwards!

Welcome to Day 2 of The Festival in Malta. After yesterday’s shared stage with the Vamos Poker Tour , the schedule is now fully focused on The Festival Series.

For a recap of what happened on the first day of the series, check out this article in the News section.

Here’s the plan for today:

Both the Cash Game Challenge and Franke’s Flip Flops have had their formats updated, as each will now conclude differently, with a final on Sunday.

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