Mixed Games Focused Festival Series Set to Get Underway in Malta

The Festival Series’ second event of the year is about to get underway at Portomaso Casino in St Julians, Malta. The series has an eclectic event schedule that leans heavily on non-Hold’em and mixed game formats. 

There are of course plenty of No Limit Texas Hold'em (NLH) events on The Festival in Malta’s 45 event schedule, but there are more non-Hold-’em side events than you will find at most European poker festivals.

Unusually, the series is sharing its first day with the last day of another poker operator’s event. The Vamos Poker Tour is another relative newcomer to the European live poker scene and is currently in the midst of a five day-festival that features a €340 buy-in Main Event.

The tournament schedule for The Festival Series events is quite unique, including a mix of tournaments and competitions not found at any other poker series.

In addition to tournaments, there is also a cash game challenge and a daily flips competition with a grand final at the end of the week for the luckiest of flippers.

Flips are essentially on-demand one-hand sit and go tournaments, where all players are all-in every hand.

Highlights of The Festival in Malta include the €550 Main Event, which has 5 starting days, but there is no guaranteed prize pool. Nevertheless. it’s expected to attract several hundred entries and the final prize pool is likely to exceed €250,000.

That’s not the only Main Event as the Festival Series, with its dedication to non-Hold’em games also holds a Mixed Games Main Event, also with a €550 buy-in. The format of this event is H.O.R.S.E.S, which adds Sviten Special to the usual H.O.R.S.E mixed game rotation.

The €250 The HendonMob Championship is another marquee event that regularly takes place at The Festival and this edition has a €100,000 guarantee.

There are many non-Hold’em and mixed game poker tournaments on the schedule including several Pot Limit Omaha tournaments, 8-game, H.O.R.S.E, Sviten Special and Open Face Chinese poker.

There is also a €1,100 buy-in High roller and many other side events and satellites.

Full details of the schedule can be found on The Festival website.

The Festival Series is about more than just poker, there are also casino game tournaments and a sports betting competition. 

The casino game tournaments include blackjack, roulette and slots. You may be familiar with these as casino games, but the tournament versions of them require strategic thinking as well as luck. 

The rules of each casino game tournament differ, but in all the object is to acquire the most chips within a specific number of hands or spins.  

The objective is not so much to beat the dealer (although that is clearly a thing too, if you lose every hand or spin, you ain’t gonna win) but to best your opponents; and to do that you need the right betting strategy.

The Festival Series is the brainchild of Martin “Franke” von Zweigbergk, who had previously run Cash Game Festival events. Franke is a very social player at the poker table and this extends to his time away from table as well. 

He created The Festival Series to be an entertaining event to attend and as such the off-the-table activities reflect this, with several “hospitality” events scheduled every day.

Activities for The Festival in Malta include:

There is also a liveblog on The Festival Series website, authored by none other than myself. We cover news, results and stories from the event, both on and off the tables. 

It’s all very jovial and light hearted, except for the serious bits at the business end of tournaments. 

I’m a Malta resident and from time-to-time I do some reporting on live poker events. I’ll also be doing a similar role at the Battle of Malta later this year.

The third and final Festival Series event of 2024 will take place in November in the Slovakian capital Bratislava.

It’s likely that iPoker (e.g. Grosvenor Poker or Betfred Poker) will once again have a network wide satellite path and that other sites, such as Unibet Poker will have their own qualifiers running too. Full details will be announced soon after the Malta event concludes.