Tereza Vernerova became the first woman to win the Battle of Malta Main Event, outlasting a field of 5,368 entries at Casino Malta to claim the Knight Trophy and a six-figure payday at the tournament’s Autumn Edition. The Czech player, who had never previously reached a tournament final table of this size, took down the title in a three-way deal that saw her bank €162,635 after a tense, hand-for-hand finish.
A Record Crowd for the €600 Main Event
The Battle of Malta has built its reputation on affordable buy-ins and massive fields, and the Autumn Edition Main Event lived up to that formula again. For €600, 5,368 players took their shot at the Knight Trophy, filling Casino Malta with one of the largest live tournament crowds the venue has hosted this year. The structure rewarded patience over the course of several starting flights before the field consolidated into a single room for the money finish.
Vernerova arrived at the unofficial final table as the chip leader, a position she described as more stressful than comfortable. She had cashed in previous events but had never been the player everyone else was aiming at on a stage this large, and she admitted the nerves were real even as the stack gave her room to play aggressively.
A Three-Way Deal Reshapes the Prize Pool
As the final table thinned to three players, Vernerova, Israel’s Ofer Tadmor and the United Kingdom’s James Malatynski negotiated a deal that locked in guaranteed money before play resumed. Under the terms of that agreement, Tadmor and Malatynski secured larger guaranteed amounts than Vernerova going in, but the Knight Trophy and the title of Main Event champion remained on the table for whoever won the last hand. That detail mattered enormously once the cards started flying again, because Vernerova used the freedom of a locked-in payday to play some of her most aggressive poker of the week.
Earlier at the final table, China’s Lulei Hu had arrived as the shortest stack but doubled up by turning a set against Malatynski to survive deep into the night. Spain’s Marco Lopez Coronado was the first elimination of the day, going out in eighth after running a flush into a bigger hand against Greece’s Marios Kapiris. Hu’s run eventually ended in fourth place when Malatynski connected on a big river pot to seize the chip lead, a swing that set up the final three-way negotiations.
Hero Calls and a Straight Flush on the Way to Heads-Up
Once the deal was signed, Malatynski kept applying pressure as the new chip leader, but Vernerova would not fold to it. In one of the pivotal hands of the night, she made a hero call against a river shove from Malatynski that sent him to the rail in third place and handed her a commanding stack heading into heads-up play.
Tadmor did not go quietly. He briefly seized the chip lead in heads-up play with a straight flush against Vernerova, a cooler that could have changed the entire complexion of the match. Vernerova answered by flopping trips against Tadmor’s top two pair to reclaim the advantage, and the match reached its conclusion when Tadmor moved all in on a paired flop. Vernerova snap-called with trip tens, and her hand held to end the tournament and secure the trophy.
Making History as the First Woman Champion
Battle of Malta has run for more than a decade and crowned dozens of Main Event champions, but Vernerova is the first woman to have her name added to that list. She called the achievement one of the best feelings of her life and credited her husband, who stayed by her side throughout the tournament, bringing food and water during breaks and helping her stay calm between levels.
Her husband has his own trophies from past tournament wins, and Vernerova confirmed the Knight Trophy will now sit alongside them as the biggest prize in their shared collection. For a player who said she had never faced a final table this large, the win instantly becomes the signature result of her career, with €162,635 as the headline figure from a tournament where the originally posted top prize before the deal was considerably higher.
What Comes Next for Vernerova and the Battle of Malta Tour
Winning the Main Event comes with more than prize money and hardware. Vernerova earned an invitation to join the Battle of Malta’s 2027 tour, which is scheduled to make stops in Barcelona, Bratislava and Tallinn before returning to Malta for next year’s Summer Edition. She singled out Bratislava as a destination she is looking forward to, noting it sits close to her home in the Czech Republic, and she recalled past visits to Tallinn during World Series of Poker Circuit stops there.
For readers newer to tournament poker who want to understand why hands like trip tens hold up against top two pair, or how a flopped set compares to top pair, Poker Pro Academy’s poker hand rankings guide breaks down every hand category from high card through royal flush. Battle of Malta has long served as an entry point for recreational players testing themselves against bigger fields, and results like Vernerova’s, a first-time deep run turning into a historic title, are part of why the series keeps drawing record crowds.
The Autumn Edition’s result also adds another data point to a strong year for European live tournament attendance, with low buy-ins continuing to produce some of the largest fields on the continent. Vernerova’s win will likely be remembered as one of the signature storylines of that trend, a reminder that in a 5,368-entry field, anyone holding the chip lead at the final table carries both the pressure and the opportunity to make history.
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