‘I won €107,000 at poker... To be honest, I didn’t even think about the cash’

The poker player and gaming industry professional found himself  €107,500 richer in the wee hours of 9 November, when he came head-to-head with Bulgaria’s ultimately victorious Antoan Katsarov as the duo fought for the top spot at the Battle for Malta Poker Tournament organised by Poker Listings – the biggest event of its kind on the island.

“Funnily enough, I only started thinking about the money until quite late into it… even during the dinner breaks and so on, people would ask me ‘what’s the price for third place, what’s the price for fourth?’ and I just didn’t know… and to this day I still haven’t give them the bank details to collect the money!”

Brincat is still visibly frazzled from his victory. When I meet him at the Poker Listings offices at the Strand in Gzira, he’s got a perma-smile plastered on his face, along with a jittery demeanour that suggests he still hasn’t had time to come back down to earth. And who can blame him? Sporting a carefully curated hipster beard, the 28-year-old confesses that having his picture taken for a newspaper is an entirely “new” experience to him – as was playing in a high-calibre tournament like the Battle of Malta.

So it’s clear that we’re not dealing with a jaded old veteran here, and in fact Brincat confesses that he’s still on a learning curve as far as his poker game is concerned.

“I don’t consider myself to be anywhere near a pro at this point – I still have a long way to go. I first started off just by playing home games, and in the first few years it was really just all about getting to grips with the rules and so on. But when you come face to face with other players, especially the more experienced ones, the whole psychology of the game starts to come into it,” Bricat says, adding that while it took him a few years to develop his game, and that there’s certainly room for improvement, “the tournament was a nice validation of my Poker career so far!”

Brincat’s main competitor, Katsarov, outlasted a field of 1,447 entries – the biggest in Maltese history – over three days of play to claim the €122,750 first-place prize.

Brincat was the second Maltese player to make the final table and finish as runner-up, since last year Konrad Abela also finished second.

The record 1,447 entries in the main event this year surpassed the 888 entries of last year’s main event which held the previous record for biggest ever tournament on Malta.

Eight countries were represented at the 10-man final table with Sweden (3), the Netherlands, Bulgaria, France, Ireland, Poland and Italy all having players at the table.

Combined, the final 10 players split €424,895 between them – another record for the Battle of Malta.

“It’s amazing how towards the end, your mind completely switches to patriotic mode,” Brincat says. “You just start thinking – ‘I’m gonna win this for my country’. It’s subconscious, you don’t even notice that you’re doing it.

“But that’s how I felt, sitting there at the final table. I just thought, ‘I want to win this so badly, I’m going to give this the hardest game possible’,” Brincat says, adding that he was humbled by the support he received from fellow Maltese poker players – a “tight knit” community he considers to be more than ready to spar with their international counterparts.

“Some of the players based here are foreign, but the Maltese people are catching up now… and I think I’m a good example of that. I think we have some good players over here, that’s for sure. And playing against these foreign pros is an opportunity for us to learn, and know that we can give them a good fight.”

Asked what he was going to do with the prize money, Brincat confesses to going for the “sensible” option.

“I’ll be giving some of the money to my parents, so that they can enjoy a decent holiday, and invest the rest in some property or something. It’s boring – I know!”