Sunday at the Battle of Malta at Casino Malta and the Eden Arena at the Intercontinental Hotel saw the Main Event complete its last starting day. It was a turbo flight with a full price buy in and by the time late registration had closed, 849 players had entered. This brought the total number of entries in the Main Event up to 5,799, an all-time record for the Battle of Malta. The prize pool also reached new heights, exceeding €2.5m for the first time, ending up at a staggering €2,578,172. When the winner emerges on Wednesday afternoon, they will not only claim the trophy and title, but also €300,800 the biggest first prize awarded in the event’s history. This is almost twice the size of the entire prize pool that was generated way back at the very first Battle of Malta in 2012.

Anthony Ouillon Bags Main Event Day 1i €10,000 Bonus

Day 1i was the final starting flight of the Main Event and was played on 20-minute clock, but with a full price buy-in of €600. It began at 10am and despite the early start over 300 players had bought in by the time the cards were in the air. This was the last chance for players to secure their continued existence in the tournament.

Anthony Ouillon headed into Day 2 €10,000 richer thanks to bagging the overall Day 1i lead with a stack of 1,077,000 chips. Michael Howard may not be a chip millionaire with 999,000 but he also earned a healthy €5,000 bonus for the second most chips on Day 1i while Domenico Candido banked €3,000 for bagging up the third place stack of 879,000 in chips. These were the top ten chip counts for Day 1i.

Player	Chips
Anthony Ouillon	1,077,000
Michael Howard	999,000
Domenico Candido	879,000
Hendrik Blokdijk	808,000
Michal Grzegorz Procner	655,000
Adrien Di Grande	652,000
Richard Msall	632,000
Paul Michael Lyons	631,000
Salvatore Merendino	619,000
Michele Ditarano	577,000

Main Event Day 2

After four levels of one hour each, the 2024 Battle of Malta Main Event witnessed the 760 players that advanced with at least a €800 min-cash wiggle down to just 290 hopefuls in hunt for the €300,800 top prize.

Hendrik Blokdijk had a heck of a day as he catapulted his 16th place stack of 808,000 into 2,485,000 to end Day 2 in the chip lead. Cosme Martinez (2,145,000) and Darko Svesko (2,025,000) also ended the day with at least 2 million.

Meanwhile, the 2024 Battle of Malta Spring Edition Main Event champion Vasileios Zisis has placed himself in an amazing position in his attempt to go back-to-back He ended the day with 1,920,000, just behind Viktor Waal (1,930,000) to complete the top five on the leaderboard.

Four players who won chip leader bonuses in the opening flights failed to progress to Day 3. Thid included Giampiero Arena (360th – €2,000 bonus + €1,590 = €3,590), Cecilia Pascaglini (366th – €10,000 bonus + €1,590 = €11,590), Francesco Tino (372nd – €5,000 bonus + €1,590 = €6,590), and Krystian Nalepka (522nd – €5,000 + €1,210 = €6,210).

The action will resume at 1 p.m. on Monday with blinds at 10,000/20,000 with a 20,000 big blind ante. These are the top ten chip counts going into Day 3. For the full ending chip counts from Day 2, check out this earlier blog post.

Position	Name	Chips	Big Blinds
1	Hendrik Blokdijk	2,485,000	124
2	Cosme Martinez	2,145,000	107
3	Darko Svesko	2,025,000	101
4	Viktor Waal	1,930,000	97
5	Vasileios Zisis	1,920,000	96
6	Gabriele Nuzzo	1,840,000	92
7	Vincenzo Mangiapane	1,825,000	91
8	Parminder Kandola	1,800,000	90
9	Daniel Heredi	1,765,000	88
10	Antonios Kandilas	1,765,000	88

Quigioco High Roller Day 1

The €1,100 Quigioco High Roller’s first day saw 233 players take their seats, from which 137 survived. The €300,000 guaranteed tournament has a regressive structure, which means that the blinds are rolled back three levels when play begins on Day, with registration open for a further three levels of play. 

Gilbert Black is the chip leader from with 330,00. These are the top ten chip counts from the day.

Position	Player Name	Chips
1	Gilbert Black	330,000
2	Evgeny Sirotenko	267,300
3	Lorenzo Pannunzi	234,900
4	Nadav Barash	215,800
5	Erik Haugland	205,000
6	Michael Stewart	189,400
7	Lorenzo Di Blasi	187,500
8	Michele Nizzardelli	180,000
9	Francesco Caramazza	176,600
10	Max Gerritsen	176,500

Side Event News

Sadly some of Sunday’s side events had to be canceled, due to the ongoing high demand for the Main Event. The 8-Game, HyperTurbo and the 9pm High Roller satellite were all delisted from the schedule. The side events that did run were well attended.

The Rebet360 €330 NLH began at 3pm and saw 72 entrants fight it out for the top prize. It was won by Raf de Wever for €4,080. This was the only side event to reach its conclusion on Sunday as the €300 Full Tilt Catania Bounty is a two day event. As per the High Roller, it has a regressive structure, with registration open for a further three levels of play at the start of Day 2.

The first day of this €70,000 guaranteed bounty event had 398 entries, 156 of whom still had stacks by the end of the day. The overnight chip leader is Kevin Remelie from the UK whose 667,000 stack is 2.5x bigger than that of his nearest challenger, Neven Damjanovic who has 273,000, a lead of almost 400,000. Play resumes at 3pm on Monday.

Monday’s Schedule at the Battle of Malta Autumn Edition 2024

With the Main Event now down to under 300 players, it is no longer dominating the available table space, which should mean that there are no further disruptions to the advertised schedule. It’s the busiest day of the festival in terms of side events, with seven different options for players, plus two satellites.

The first event of the day is the last High Roller satellite, which has had its start time rescheduled to 12pm, having originally been slated to start at 11am. 

Most of the other tournaments today are sponsored side events Two that began on Sunday are the Quigiuoco High Roller and the Full Tilt Catania Bounty, which restart at 2pm an 3pm respectively.

The first side event of the day is the €400 (€360+€40) NLH IPC Deepstack at 1pm. At 4pm, the FLIP (Fantastic Ladies in Poker) Ladies Event begins, hosted by Daiva Byrne. It has a €150 (€135+€15) buy in and a €5,000 guarantee. There’s absolutely no truth in the rumour that Asif ‘The Poker Tourist’ Warris is planning to don a frock to try and sneak into the tournament this time, as he has done at least once in the past.

The €200 NLH IPF NLH with a €10,000 guarantee begins at 5pm and this evening there are two further side events to choose from plus a satellite into Tuesday’s Super High Roller.

Time	Event Description	Buy-in	Fee	Starting Stack	Level Duration
12:00	NLH Satellite One Shot – QUIGIOCO – HIGH ROLLER €300.000 GTD	€110	€20	10K	20 min
13:00	BOM Day3 €1,500,000 GTD	–	–	–	75 min
13:00	NLH IPC Deep Stack	€360	€40	40K	20 min
14:00	NLH QUIGIOCO – HIGH ROLLER €300.000 GTD – Day2	€1,000	€100	50K	30/40 min
15:00	NLH FULL TILT CATANIA Bounty €70.000 GTD	€110+€150	€40	30K	20 min
16:00	NLH Ladies Event €5000 GTD	€135	€15	20K	20 min
17:00	NLH IPF €10,000 GTD	€160	€40	30K	20 min
20:00	NLH Novibet Ultradeep PKO	€150+€150	€30	100K	20 min
21:00	NLH SUPER HIGH ROLLER Satellite Accumulator	€300	€30	20K	20 min
22:00	NLH HYPERTURBO	€130	€20	20K	10 min

 

Party Time at the Eden Arena

Last night was also the player party, which was held at The Eden Superbowl, which has recently been refurbished and upgraded. Bowling, darts, scary nuns and evil clowns awaited those who made it there, plus nibbles and an open bar.