Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/416739
16 THE poker player and gaming in- dustry 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 Tourna- ment 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, peo- ple 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 an- ywhere 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 Scoring over €107,000 after he came in second place at the Battle of Malta Poker Tournament earlier this month, Alan Brincat tells TEODOR RELJIC that the money was the last thing on his mind, as he came head- to-head with internationally- renowned professionals PHOTOGRAPHY BY CHRIS MANGION