Israeli Poker Championship Malta Live Sponsorship Review

The Israeli Poker Championship (IPC) is Israel’s biggest poker tour and one of the fastest growing in the business.

About the Israeli Poker Championship

Last year the stops of its fifth season took place in poker meccas such as Malta, Vienna, Varna or Sunny Beach, Bulgaria and all main events attracted fields of more than 300 players.

The Israeli Poker Championship is so popular with players because of its great price-performance-ratio and fantastic deep stack structures.

At the Main Event you get 40.000 Chips and 40 minute levels for a buy-in of only €440!

About our sponsored player

Lars Liedtke is a well-known poker journalist, who lives in Malta since three years.

He started playing poker in 2006 and quickly climbed up the limits. Being a regular at NL200 he managed to finance his whole studies of sports journalism with online poker.

VIP-Grinders player Lars Liedtke at the Israeli Poker Championship Malta.

At that time Lars also made the decision to become a poker journalist and works in the poker branch since 8 years now.

Read his Review of the Israeli Poker Championship here:

“The season opening of the Israeli Poker Championship (IPC) traditionally takes place in Malta and always brings great tournaments and action-packed cash games, so there was no doubt that I wanted to be a part of it.

After informing VIP-Grinders that I play the Main Event, they agreed to sponsor me for the tournament.

The IPC Main Event has a fantastic structure with 40.000 chips and 40 minute blind levels and gives you a lot of poker for your money.

In addition to that, this tournament is really soft as Israelis are not allowed to play neither live nor online in their country and therefore simply lack experience.

The IPC is a 4-day tournament and I decided to play Day 1B on Saturday. As hoped for my table was soft with mostly Israeli players and only few locals.

Although I am more of a cash game player and only play tournaments on the site, I gave myself a big edge on the field and managed to chip up from 40,000 to 70.000 chips in the first half of the day.

Unfortunately, our table broke and I was moved to a tougher one with two aggressive big stacks to my left. As the table was very aggressive, I decided to play tight and wait for good starting hands or spots.

I managed to keep my stack at the 70k mark until the last level of the day, when the following hand happened:

At Blinds of 1.200/2.400 it was folded to me in the cut-off and I raised with #9c# #9h# to 5.200. One of the big stacks then reraised from the button to 15.500 and I called.

The flop #9s# #6h# #2s# was favorable and I decided to make a small donk bet hoping to induce a raise/shove. So I made it 12.500 and the button instantly moved all-in.

I snap-called and he turned over #As# #Ks# for the nut flush draw plus overcards.  The turn #10h# was a blank, but on the river the #8s hit and I was out.

The next two days I played cash games as they were really juicy. It went pretty well and I won 4 buy-ins to easily make up for the cooler in the tournament, so all good 🙂

I would like to thank VIP-Grinders.com for this great experience and definitely recommend you guys to become a member and apply for a sponsorship at their site. Check out the next stops of the IPC in Vienna and Varna, as this series provides awesome tournaments and really good cash games.”

The best pictures of the IPC Malta:

Mark Patrickson

Professional Poker Journalist

Mark Patrickson is a poker journalist with over ten years of experience. He writes for VIP-Grinders.com, sharing his deep knowledge of poker. He creates interesting content about poker strategy, trends, and news for poker fans worldwide. [more]