In October, the European Poker Tour (EPT) announced that Malta has been added as a stop on this year’s tour. Though the March dates for the poker festival had been set, no formal schedule had yet to be published. Last week, the complete schedule for EPT Malta was, in fact, release, and it is a doozy.
Running March 18th through March 28th, 2015, at the Portomaso Casino in St. Julian’s, EPT Malta will feature a staggering 67 tournaments. Buy-ins aside, if you can’t find an event that tickles your fancy, you might need to question your enjoyment of poker. Many of the usual No-Limit Hold’em events are on the docket, but with so many tournaments, EPT Malta is able to mix things up to keep everyone entertained.
One of the highlights is the set of six “flipout” tournaments. Flipout tournaments can actually be found on Full Tilt Poker, which is convenient, since it is the sister site of PokerStars, the company that operates the European Poker Tour. These types of tourneys are rather silly, but apparently there are plenty of people who like to gamble it up, so more power to them. The tournament starts with a shootout round in which each table is its own entity that plays down until just one person remains. The lone survivor from each table moves on to the next round. The twist in a flipout tournament is that in said shootout round, everyone is automatically put all-in every hand, absolutely no skill is involved. The money bubble bursts at the end of the shootout round and the rest of the tournament proceeds as any normal one would, with the prize money distributed to everyone who remains.
EPT Malta will also have four Stud Championship events, all for €1,000: regular Stud, Stud Hi/Lo, Razz, and Triple Stud. Other odd games include Super Hold’em (same as Hold’em except with three hole cards), Deuces Wild, Turbo Limit Hold’em, and Crazy Pineapple (one of my all-time favorite games and one of the few redeeming qualities about the late UltimateBet; players are dealt three hole cards and discard one after the flop).
And since poker tends to cater to the night owl, there will be five midnight tournaments for those who don’t like natural light.
Unfortunately, with the birth of EPT Malta comes the apparent death of the long-running EPT Sanremo; it will combine with the PokerStars Italian Poker Tour. When EPT Malta was announced a couple months ago, EPT President Edgar Stuchly said, “After a great deal of discussion with players and colleagues, we decided it was time to add a fresh and exciting stop to the EPT schedule. Malta is a great destination for the EPT and we expect strong participation numbers.”
Said Portomaso Casino General Manager Eros Ganzina, “Malta is renowned as being a very popular poker destination and, in the last five years, Portomaso Casino has proven to be more than capable of hosting large-scale events. The EPT is a landmark event for us and we are looking forward to hosting such a prestigious tournament.”
The entire EPT Malta schedule can be found here.
