Day Seven at The Festival in Malta
Today is the seventh and penultimate day of The Festival in Malta, which has now reached Day 2 of the Main Event. Play resumes at 12pm, the blinds have been rolled back two levels and late registration is still open for the first to levels of play today.
There were 216 players who made it through from the five starting days with Jon Persent holding the chip lead at the start of play, on 256,000 and the only players to have more than 200,000. His nearest challenger is Jesper Lucas on 199,000 with Milan Ljubisic third on 169,100.
Play was scheduled to continue today until there are 16 players left, however in his opening speech of the day Franke suggested that depending on the situation, its possible they may even play until they reach the final table. Given the excellent structure of the tournament that seems unlikely as this is already set to be a long Day 2, with over 250 players still in at the start of the day and late registration still open.
There’s also plenty of other options on the schedule for those who are no longer involved in the Main Event and are not tempted to late register. The first day of the €250 Mystery Bounty starts at 3pm and there are also two non-Hold’em offerings on today’s schedule. The first of these is a €250 PLO at 2pm and at 6.30pm there is a €125 2-7 Triple Draw, which was a late addition to the schedule, along with the €125 Saturday Madness NLH at 8.30pm.
This is the last day that the cash game challenge will be running , with sessions starting at 8pm and 10.30pm. There’s also the last session of Franke’s Flip Flops at 9pm, which will have it’s Final Flip Grand Final on Sunday with the winner scooping a €1,600 Festival in Bratislava package. There’s still one place available for the player who wins the most flips in tonight’s final session.
Day Seven Event Schedule
| Start Time | Event # | Buy-In | Tournament | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 12:00 | 8 | €550 | MAIN EVENT DAY 2 | |
| 13.00 | 37 | €125 | Sportsbook Tournament | |
| 14:00 | 38 | €250 | PLO Freezeout | |
| 15:00 | 39 | €250 | Texas Mystery Bounty Day 1 | |
| 18:30 | Extra Event | €125 | 2-7 Triple Draw | |
| 20:00 | 40 | €1,000 | Cash Game Challenge €5/5 Texas | |
| 20:30 | Extra Event | €125 | Saturday Madness | |
| 22:30 | 41 | €1,000 | Cash Game Challenge €5/5 PLO |
You can follow The Festival in Malta in several different ways. We provide multi-platform coverage, including:
- News, reports, random thoughts and chip counts by Jonathan Raab (me) can be found on the liveblog.
- Reels and short clips on The Festival’s Instagram account, with coverage fronted by effervescent Vaclav ‘Lemon’ Dusek.
- Interviews and montages, on YouTube presented by the one and only Andreas ‘Wiseguy’ Hoglund. Don’t mess with him by the way, he’s called Wiseguy for a reason.
- Photos and reels by Melvin Schroen on our Facebook page
- Reposts and other content posted on the Festival’s X account
Photos by Mairo ‘EstonianWeirdo’ Toom. Videography by Nekit Helljesus. Video editing by Aleksandr Pljuw
