A Week Of Poker In Malta

I’m currently in Malta with a few other Irish poker players for a string of tournaments they have here. I played day 1A of the IPT yesterday.

It was a €2,200 buyin filled with Italians. My starting table was an absolute dream, it had one decent young French player and the rest were all 30+ bad Italians.

Given the 20,000 starting stack and the one hour clock you would think I would have easily cruised into day two, but no, things just didn’t go my way. I lost a big pot early on where I called a raise to 400 in the big blind with J 9.

The flop came an acceptable T-8-7 rainbow, I check raised the guys bet from 650 to 1,900, he called, turn was a 3, I bet 3,700 and he called pretty quickly. The river paired the board with a 7 and i bet 5,700, he instantly shoved it in my face before my bet had even crossed the line.

He was an old Italian man and I just couldn’t see him doing it with a bare 7 or a straight, so I made the hero fold and moved on. From then on I literally didn’t win a pot until my demise. The good young French kid opened to 750 at 150/300 25 ante, a bad player called on the button and I was in the sb playing 8,000 and K J, I shoved and the decent player tanked it off with A J, thats about as light as i’d shove there, but a good call nonetheless, no help from the board and it was good game.

Theres a 1K side event on Saturday which I will play in and the FTOPS is on, so looking forward to tackling a few of them. Would be nice to upgrade my Mini-FTOPS jersey for a bigger one.

Then on Wednesday there is €1,500 EMOP event here in Malta. So I’ve got a few events to look forward to while i’m here. In an ideal world, winning and ftops jersey or shipping one of the coming live events would be ideal!