Argentinian Qualifier Jacques Blit Takes Down partypokers’ Grand Prix Malta 2023!
The partypoker Grand Prix with a reasonable buy-in of €550, and a guaranteed prize pool of an epic €1,000,000 would come to an end on Day 4 of the Main Event. Nine players came back to Portomaso Casino to try and take this coveted title back home. Like the whole live poker tournament, the Italians were strongly dominating in terms of the number of entrants.
For most of the tournament play and the PokerListings live blog, they were highly present as well. But to take down the title, they had to deal with players from Cyprus, Argentina, and Finland. Eros Nastasi was in the lead when we kicked off the penultimate day, where one player had to bust before we could start with the official final table. PokerListings had been present all week and was a witness of the great apotheose that the day would bring. The live stream would also be prepared once again, so family, friends, and other poker fanatics could enjoy all the action from their own heroes.
Borghetti Cannot Overcome Disappointment the Previous Day
Luciano Borghetti, who already has ten years of experience with live tournament poker, got extremely unlucky in the last hand of the previous day, where he was obliged to make the call pre-flop due to a moment where seemed to want to open up the action with a raise, but was ruled to be a call only. Due to this, the big blind was able to join the ride for free and became fortunate with hit three-of-a-kind preflop.
While Borghetti had made top-pair on the river, the action went out of hand and had to give away most of his chips. On the final day, he couldn’t turn it around and finished in 9th place by a classic coinflip with his Queens against the Ace-King of Massimiliano Ferro. Time to say ‘Ciao’, before the final table would be prepared to be streamed live on Twitch and Youtube.
With over half a million in career earnings, and being well-known in the Italian poker circuit, everyone knew from the get-go that Nastasi would be the one to look out for. From the end of Day 2 onwards, we have seen him applying tons of pressure and getting himself into situations where he would just leave every opponent gobsmacked, by always having the best of it. At the final table, he would be involved in the most deciding pot of the tournament, busting Juusto Keskitola:
‘’Nastasi opened the action and raised it up to 900,000. Keskitola found a monster hand and made a 3-bet to 2,700,000. Nastasi didn't think for a bit how he would want to approach this situation, before announcing the 4-bet to 4,400,000. Keskitola was for the rough decision and shoved all-in and got an Insta call from Nastasi. Two massive stacks colliding with each other!
Nastasi: K K
Keskitalo: A K
The board ran out J 8 3 , and the 9 on the turn, and the 6 completed the board. Juuso is out!’’
Nastasi would possess almost half of the chips in play at that point, with six players remaining in the contest, as prior to this key hand, the most fearsome player of them all, Andrea Benelli, would have to leave the stage when his pocket 10’s were not able to win from the pocket Queens of Favaloro.
Benelli is known for his 4th place finishes in the EPT Main Events of Deauville and San-Remo, where Victoria Cohen won the EPT title as the first female player ever, but couldn’t give those results a continuation.
In 7th place, good for another personal high score, it was fans’ favourite Juusto Keskitola who hit the rail. For a little less than a year, he has been playing most of the grand events of Malta, but never made it further as a casual min-cash. His rail, consisting of fellow Maltese residents and icons such as Clint Sammut, all felt the pain after having to leave the final table in pure disillusion. After he had calmed down from the disappointment, he mentioned to us that he really felt comfortable at the table and was feeling he had an edge on the remaining felt. Driven by his experience in home/online, and cash games, he hoped to finish the job in this unique position. We will have a more detailed interview with him post-mortem.
Italian Party is Over
With Borghetti (9th), Benelli (8th), Ritrovato (5th), and Ferro (4th) having left the tournament. It was Argentinian poker live blogger Jacques Blit who would take charge of the tournament. After winning a massive all-in against Nastasi, where he flopped the nuts and Nastasi's bottom two-pair, he was simply unstoppable. When Nastasi, the previous reigning chip leader, went out in 3rd place, it was one-way traffic all the way towards the Argentinian. Not once he would find himself in trouble at the whole final table where he needed to chase cards to be able to win a pot and with Marcello Favaloro as the heads-up opponent, he was in an ideal situation to take home yet another trophy for the Argentinians. Favaloro, who just like any other Italian poker player is very passionate , showed a couple of unorthodox moves during the tournament but managed to play himself easily towards the final battle of the tournament.
In less than an hour, the heads-up play would end, when Favaloro tried to make a hero call but failed in doing as Jacques Blit had the goods:
‘’With the blinds on 800k/1600k, and Favaloro looking up against a 3:1 disadvantage in chips, Blit opened up the action and Favaloro decided to make the call. With the flop coming 2 Q 4 , it was Blit who led the action once again with a raise, which got called as well by Favaloro. The 8 on the turn made Blit fire again and again got called by the Italian. The 7 on the river was the sign for Blit to go All-In on the river to try and finish the heads-up match, Favaloro thought for a while and then made the hero call, which didn't turn out well as Blit had a nice top-pair, top-kicker.
Blit showed the winning hand in the showdown with A Q , while Favaloro only could show J 2 for a missed flush draw and bottom-pair.’’
It would mean the end of a fantastic poker series, organized by partypoker and Portomaso Casino, powered by Hydra Entertainment. Another great homage to poker on the island of Malta, which got flooded by Italians the past week, but eventually left with complete agony, as they couldn’t finish the job.
We want to make use of this article, to thank all the readers of the live blog, recap articles, and the players on location who took time and patience to provide feedback out the tournament. From PokerListings' perspective, a big thank you to all of you, and a huge congratulations to Jacques Blit from Argentina, who takes home a massive first prize and the coveted partypoker trophy by winning the Grand Prix Malta! We will fly to yet another destination in Europe for another great game of poker!
| Place | Prize | Player Name |
| # 1 | € 145,000.00 |  BLIT JACQUES AMMIEL |
| # 2 | € 86,000.00 |  MARCELLO FAVALORO |
| # 3 | € 61,000.00 | EROS NASTASI |
| # 4 | € 45,000.00 | FERRO MASSIMILIANO |
| # 5 | € 31,000.00 | RITROVATO SALVATORE |
| # 6 | € 20,500.00 |  MANSOUR MARIOS |
| # 7 | € 14,500.00 |  KESKITALO JUUSO MATIAS |
| # 8 | € 11,700.00 | BENELLI ANDREA |
| # 9 | € 10,100.00 | BORGHETTI LUCIANO |
Would you like to review the whole final table? Check out the stream on the YouTube channel of partypoker, where Matt Staples is providing his take on the gameplay throughout the conclusion of the Grand Prix Malta 2023:
