PokerMalta.com

Graziella-Vella 3rd place at the Ladies event

Graziella Vella took the 3rd prize at the Malta Poker Dream ladies event.  The €160 freeze-out tourney attracted 37 players for a pool of around €5,500.  Many of the local Poker ladies took part in the event, including Iva Pavlova, Anna Colley, Sofia Edbom, Sharona Refalo, as well as some newcomers like Maureen Sultana.

Whilst waiting for her partner George Galea, as he progressed through the toughening levels of the main event, Graziella won €800 for her placing, after an 8 hour journey to the final table.  Starting at 6pm, with 10,000 starting chips, the levels progressed every 20 minutes, till they reached 4k/8k when Graziella entered her final hand.
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Malta Poker Dream

As the blinds take their toll on the remaining participants, here’s the chip update of the players we’re following at the Malta Poker Dream tourney.  We’re at the 16th level of blinds which reached 2,000/4,000 and 500 antes. 107 players are left in the game and the average stack has risen to 190,654 chips.

George Galea managed to shoot up to 224,000 chips giving him a much needed gasp of breath as the levels put more pressure on the players stacks.  Keith Boniface who has enjoyed the least volatility in the tournament is sitting slightly below average at 170k.  Paukstys Vytautas went up from 120k t0 around 140k, and is followed by Cosimo Dambra, who has been having his ups and downs, but is now at 120k.  Gordon Mifsud’s stack has increased slightly as he now holds 65k.

Here are the chip counts of the more familiar faces from the local Poker scene! We’re at the 15th level, 1,600 / 3,200 blinds and 400 antes.  132 players from the original starting count of 408 remain in the tourney.  Average stack is up to 154,545!

Paukstys-Vytautas - 120,000 chips

Keith Boniface - 139,000 chips

Cosimo Dambra - 63,000 chips

George Galea - 68,000 chips

Gordon Mifsud - 61,000 chips

Martin Kjaer – 30,000 chips

At 4pm, the Grandmaster hall at the Portomaso opened up its doors to the 115 players who registered themselves for Day 1 A of the Malta Poker Dream tournament.  A little after players took their seats, Melita Toniolo entered the stage, welcomed all of them to the tourney, and proceeded to introduce the organizers who expressed their warm welcome to all the players attending the 5 day event.

The tournament director proceeded to give players their instructions and reminded them the tournament structure for the day being 50,000 starting chips and 50 minute blinds.  The tournament is planned to reach the tenth level before players would cease play and get ready for day 2.  A dinner is taking place at the 6th level, which will give players a chance to relax, stretch their legs and re-fuel for the remaining 4 levels before the tournament pauses for the day.  The tourney will continue on Day 2, the 1st April 2011.

On our quick tour around the tables we saw a good number of Maltese participants for the €1,100 tournament, amongst these were:

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Mateusz Moolhuizen Unibet Open Malta Winner

Mateusz Moolhuizen is the Unibet Open Malta Winner!

Mateusz Moolhuizen was doing all the raising in the last levels of the final table. He took control of the table and his opponent started to lose out chips to him in a slow but consistent way. Peters limped in way too many hands for his own good, and Mateusz Moolhuizen kept retaliating with shoves and pushes applying pressure and putting his oopponent in tough positions.

When Peters finally got a decent hand (KT) to call Moolhuisen with, he lost against Moolhuizen’s AK who doubled up to about 2.5 million chips compared to Peters’ 1.9 million.

Peters received his final strike in the form of two pairs when Moolhuizen pushed 2.04 million chips holding KT and Peters called with his K6. A King on the flop paired both the players Kings and the turn card did nothing to help any of them. Moolhuizen’s supporters burst with joy when he hit his second pair on the river leaving his opponent to content himself with the 2nd place at the final table.

Here are the payouts for the money finishers at this year’s Unibet Open Malta tournament!

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We lost two more players and are now down to the last three at the Unibet Open Malta 2011! First out was Mikkel Christensen who in the small blind moved all in for 375,000 chips with his T8.  He got instantly called by Mateusz Moolhuizen from the big blind with QQ.  The flop showed JAK58 and Moolhuizen successfully managed to knock out Christensen leaving us with four players at the felt..

Next out was Rodolfo Gaddo in 4th place, when he moved in with his last remaining 550,000 chips whilst in the SB.  He got called by Tobias Peters from the BB.  Gaddo showed K5 against Peter’s AT.  The dealer proceeded to uncover the T89QQ giving the victory to Peters and €32,000 to Gaddo for finishing in 4^th place.