Player of the Series Announcement – The Festival Series Malta!
Last May, The Festival Series in Malta was held at the Portomaso Casino in St. Julians. During the 5th edition of our Series, we can conclude that the Main Event had a staggering amount of entries, but the side events absolutely crushed all expectations. In regard to the ranking of the ‘Player of the Series’, it resulted in an epic challenge as players received quite some points for side events this time due to the high attendance. The successor of Totti Lind, who became the winner of this ranking in Bratislava ’22, and Sean O’Donnell who managed to secure the overall ranking win in Nottingham in ’23, it was this time the Hungarian Balasz Somodi who can call himself the best performing overall winner of the ‘Player of the Series’!
The top-10 leaderboard shows that it was a close call who would take it down, as Founder of The Festival Series Martin ‘Franke’ von Zweigbergk finds himself back at the runner-up position, and the Main Event Winner Oystein Brenden from Norway, gets a nice 3rd place overall. Not only did Balasz Somodi he finish 2nd in the Main Event, but he also had several other notable finishes, giving him enough points to scoop the whole lot. With this win, he gets himself a Full Package for our next event in Bratislava (November 27th – December 3rd), worth €1600!
Previous winners Totti Lind (22nd), and Sean O’Donnell (86th), didn’t come close this time unfortunately. The ranking is also a great indication that it does not always get rewarded to play many side events, but it certainly puts you on the right track.
| Position | Surname | First Name | Country | Events | Points | |||||
| 1 | SOMODI | BALAZS | Hungary | 4 | 133.00 | |||||
| 2 | VON ZWEIGBERGK | MARTIN 'FRANKE' | Sweden | 11 | 122.00 | |||||
| 3 | BRENDEN | OYSTEIN | Norway | 7 | 112.00 | |||||
| 4 | EIDSAETER | SVEIN OLAV | Norway | 11 | 108.00 | |||||
| 5 | RITROVATO | SALVATORE | Italy | 9 | 108.00 | |||||
| 6 | KENYON | SCOTT | England | 13 | 102.00 | |||||
| 7 | ARJUT | ALLAN | Estonia | 12 | 101.00 | |||||
| 8 | SANDEN | ANDREAS | Germany | 12 | 97.00 | |||||
| 9 | BEHR | PEDER | Sweden | 10 | 94.00 | |||||
| 10 | MULLER | KAI | Germany | 4 | 93.00 |
Balasz Somodi can easily be called an experienced live poker player when looking at his overall statistics on the Hendon mob. With almost €600.000 in total live winnings, he did well for himself in Malta as he managed to take home close to €60.000 in winnings of which €40.500 came from his runner-up place in the Main Event.
| Buy-In | Event Name | Place | Prize |
| € 550.00 | Main Event | 2nd | € 40,500.00 |
| € 1,100.00 | NLHE High Roller | 9th | € 2,200.00 |
| € 1,100.00 | PLO High Roller | 2nd | € 14,700.00 |
After that second place, our host Andreas Hoglund had the pleasure in speaking to the Hungarian Stallion, little did he know back then that he has a package locked up for our next event in Bratislava already!
With this announcement, we came officially to the end of The Festival Series Malta at the lovely Portomaso Casino in St. Julians Malta. Our next stop will be at the iconic Banco Casino in Bratislava, whereas Balasz says, it is very close to his home country. But also for countries such as Austria, Poland, Italy, Czech Republic and even Germany, it is just a mile away.
After we announced to Balasz Somodi that he won the 'Player of the Series' Ranking, we asked him for his findings about the news and the event itself:
Balasz Somodi: ''Malta is a nice place to go to in general. It's not expensive, and you can do a lot of things with your family. I liked the schedule a lot, because i like to play PLO, and other fun games. That I could do that from 200€-1k Buy-Ins is just very enjoyable. The atmosphere was really nice throughout the week, everybody was friendly. I liked 'Team Norway' in particular as it was nice to see they are traveling together, and support each other.''
''When thinking about Bratislava: I know its a poker boom there, every tournament has big fields, and big guaranteed prize pools. I always wanted to check it out, but somehow i didn't manage to go yet, so I am very happy for winning this Package.''
Do you also want to secure your package already? As the next event is still quite some months ahead of us, there is loads of action at the online felts to qualify yourself already! Make sure to check out our Qualifying section on our website. Or do you perhaps like FREE packages? Then check out our Photo Competition which is available to enter for everyone out there!
