The Battle of Malta Spring Edition is now well underway at Casino Malta and the Eden Arena at the Intercontinental Hotel in St Julians. Friday was twice as busy as Thursday with numbers in all events heading north, building towards Saturday, which is expected to be the busiest day of the festival, with two further starting days in the Main Event.

The new logistical set up seems to be running smoothly, with both upstairs and downstairs being utilised effectively. Upstairs the Eden Arena, with its 27m video wall is where the Main Event and Mystery Siege were held, while side events and satellites took place within the conference space on the lower floor. Cash games, which have already been quite busy, are being held within Casino Malta itself.

Main Event Day 1b

Day 1b of the Main Event saw the number of entrants rise sharply compared with the opening flight, as 297 hopefuls began their quest for a place in Sundays Day 2. By the end of play, 45 had successful completed their mission for the day and can enjoy a rest day on Saturday before the tournament gets serious.

The chip leader at the end of the day was Krzysztof Chmielowski, who bagged up a 741,000 chips, almost 50,000 more than the Day 1a chip leader. He is also guaranteed a nice payday because as well as being in the prize money, he took down the starting day €5,000 bonus prize for posting the largest stack of the flight.

It was an eventful day with lots of interesting hands, many of which have been covered in our non-stop blog coverage, which is well worth taking some time to read back. For all the blog posts made on Friday, click here. And for a more detailed wrap up and all the chip counts of the survivors, check out the Day 1b recap posted by new blog team member and silent Jenga enthusiast Christoffer Karlen.

Emmanouil Chalkiotis Wins Mystery Siege of Malta for €23,600

The Mystery Siege of Malta was won by Emmanouil Chalkiotis from Greece. He secured his place in Day 2 via the opening flight, where he bagged the second largest stack of 428,000. He defeated Ashley Scott heads up in a late night finish, securing over €3,000 in bounties as part of his prize.

The business end of the tournament had a very Greek flavour, with three of the last four players standing being compatriots. However the biggest bounties were mostly drawn by players who didn’t make it to the final table. Gil Peter (8th place) and Carmelo Fangano (18th) scooped the two €10,000 bounties.

However the biggest bounty winner of the tournament was 16th placed finisher Rasmus Lundstroem, who captured the €7,500 and a €2,000 during the first break in play, securing a total of €12,700 in bounty prizes overall. He also chopped the €5,000 bounty.

A more in depth report on the tournament, which had a total of 617 entries will be posted later today.

Side Events

There were three further side events on Friday at the Battle of Malta Spring Edition.

The first of these was the €220 H.O.R.S.E, for which 22 players came under starters orders (although not all at the very start). It was won by local resident Bas de Laat, originally from Netherlands for €1,760. Bas has a habit of winning mixed games tournaments and his success will come as no surprise to the Maltese poker community.

Bas was heads up against another non-Maltese resident, Belgian Soner Vanelderen. Gia Carenestrom, who won the ladies event at the last Battle of Malta festival had to make the walk of shame this time, exiting as the bubble girl.

The €200 NLH Italy Play side event had 58 runners and was chopped by Giovanni Caggia and Piotr Kuziola, Both players, along with 3rd placed Giuseppe Segreto also collected packages to the next Italia Play event in Nova Gorica.

The €150 Hyperturbo was much busier than its counterpart on Thursday, with 77 entrants. Oerjan Birkestoel took the victory and €2,460 first prize.

Full results of these tournaments can be found in the results section.

Satellites

With the weekend approaching, Friday was the key day for satellites at the festival. The early satellite had 179 entrants and generated 17 tickets, with a whopping 341 contesting the late night satellite, producing a further 34 qualifiers for the €500,000 guaranteed Main Event. The second satellite on Friday was another accumulator format qualifier, which allows players to win more than one ticket. Several did just that, with two players banking three seats each!

Talk Show

The second episode of the BOM Talk show dropped on YouTube late last night and it really knocked everyone’s blocks off. I mean this literally, as they played a game of Jenga on the set while filming was in progress and only brought the show to a close after the tower had tumbled. Glen and Jason were joined by Greek player Fotios Ntamaris and BOM’s Director of Staffing Marcello Caloro, with a cameo appearance from blogger Christoffer Karlen.

Check out the Battle of Malta Youtube Channel to watch this episode.