Battle of Malta heating up as online poker thrives
The Covid-19 pandemic hasn’t been great for many sports.
Football, tennis, cricket—these all saw major tournaments cancelled, fans locked out of stadiums for years, and players impacted by extended bubbles and Covid-19 protocols.
One sport that has ridden an incredible upwards surge courtesy of the Covid-19 pandemic, however, is online poker.
Prize pools and participation numbers are at record highs, and even now when physical poker tournaments have resumed, online poker remains far more popular than pre-pandemic.
All of this means that the 2023 Battle of Malta—the online love child of GGPoker and Casino Malta—is bigger than ever this year.
One of poker’s largest online events surges towards a climax
We’re now officially halfway through the Battle of Malta.
Beginning on 10 July, and wrapping up 31 July, this online series features 18 key events, a plethora of side-events, and over €25 million of guaranteed prize money. Buy ins range from €50, all the way through to €1,050, with event prize pools anywhere from €100,000, to as high as €2,500,000.
Perhaps the most attractive of these for the serious-but-not-too-serious poker player was the Global MILLION$ European Cup, which boasted a prize pool of €1,000,000, yet a modest buy-in of only €50.
20,842 players entered the Global MILLION$ European Cup, all vying for the guaranteed prize pool of €1,000,000. All but one of the final table players locked up winnings over €10,000, with ‘LLinusLLvoe’ from Hong Kong the winner, bringing in a payday of €83,479, followed by Latvian ‘Andrejs Kovalovs’ and ‘serena’ from Ecuador, who won €63,010 and €47,251 respectively.
Through the first 12 days of play, we’re nine events down, and nine events remain.
All eyes on the main event of the Battle of Malta
The crescendo of 2022 Battle of Malta online is their live main event, with a prize pool of €2,500,000.
Every player winning any of the other 17 events wins a ticket to enter the tournament, worth €555, plus a range of satellites are in place to win seats as well.
GGPoker is confident that this event will be exactly what its fans are after. Speaking to John Scanlon, the Director of Sponsorship and Live Events at GGPoker, he had this to say about the 2022 tournament,
“GGPoker is proud to partner once against with Casino Malta once more to host the ever-popular Battle of Malta Online. With loads of mid-stakes poker tournaments to choose from, 18 awesome feature events, and at least €25,000,000 to be won, we know that players will love this year’s series just as much as in previous years.”
Heading into the main event, the Battle of Malta Online leader board offers seats for the top 25 players across the series, as well as accommodation. Currently, this is led by ‘zemachess’ on 1,504.22 points, followed by ‘trapmore’ and ‘haha417’ on 1,489.56 and 1,464.99 points.
These are the favorites heading into the late July climax, however, the event will be hotly contested as is every online poker tournament of this size.
