TILTED TALES #3: As I sat down one hour late at the fancy dinner table where I didn’t know anyone, the Serbian guy next to me claimed I owed him €150 for an express dry cleaning bill.

“What the h*** are you talking about, I’ve never met you,” I replied.

“Yes, we met in London.”

“Oh… At the EGR Awards last week?”

“Yes, you spilled a glass of red wine on my jacket. I was going to SiGMA Brazil the next day and had to have it express-cleaned overnight.”

PAPER PLANE BETTING

The guy, whom I later learned was Vladan Blagojevic from Odin.gg, was laughing hard. I knew right away it would be a fun dinner. I couldn’t remember spilling wine on him but then again, I absolutely could not rule anything out from that evening. either. We did throw paper planes at each other while betting on whether it would hit or not; that I do remember. But the open bar and the frequent refills got the best of me in the end.

I insisted to pay the bill but Vladan wasn’t too bothered, so we quickly found a compromise: when we would meet at the casino later in the week for the iGaming Next Poker, I would put €130 on Red on the roulette and we would split the winnings. If there were any.

But this dinner was not until Wednesday of the iGaming Next Week in Malta and there was plenty of action before that.

iGAMING NEXT PADEL BY ALL-IN GLOBAL

I was joined on Monday by our Head of Sales Dean Rayson and Sales Intern Jo Skaane Dåstøl. “Sensible” isn’t the first word I would use to describe this trio, but we had an early night on Monday, with our early Tuesday morning Padel Tournament in mind, where our Head of Innovation Jose Uribe and HR Manager Eolo Barilari also joined.

We were the main sponsor of iGaming Next’s Padel Tournament and IK Padel Malta was branded to the brim with logos of All-in Global.

The 60 spaces had filled up weeks in advance and it was a magical day of padel and networking. The bookmaker’s favourites Victor Martyn and Niclas Elfstedt (in the picture below) won the “pro” tournament while Theodoros Papathanasiou and Gers Berberi took down the beginners trophy.

Go here to see all of the 102 photos and make sure to sign up for our SiGMA Padel Tournament on November 17th via kate@all-in.global.

HOW MANY iGAMING DELEGATES FIT IN AN ELEVATOR?

With the Padel Tournament out of the way, the party was on.

At the end of the night we ended up in an after-party in San Ġwann. The apartment was the penthouse on the 6th floor and we got into the small elevator one after the other. Having been stuck in an elevator in Malta before, I shouted “let me out” when person number 7 and 8 squeezed in. But the #6 button was pushed before I could move and the doors closed.

I was fuming on the inside but tried to remain calm as the elevator moved upwards. 1-2-3-4-5. KA-BOOM.

Of course we got stuck between floor 5 and 6. We tried forcing the doors open but they didn’t budge a milimetre. In case you didn’t know: Malta is warm in summer. There was some sort of a ventilation system inside the elevator but it quickly became apparent that the air quality would be an issue. According to this article from Times of Malta from 2012, there are around 8,000 lifts in Malta deemed “potentially unsafe” because they are unregistered, uncertified and not regularly inspected.

It was in the middle of the night so we didn’t want to wake up the whole building by constantly pressing the alarm. Luckily, we had a phone with reception, so I managed to call the emergency number.

A guy replied on the other end but I got the feeling he didn’t appreciate the urgency. I gave him the address and called Charlotte Kamlin who had already arrived at the party upstairs. She offered to call the fire brigade and we figured it was better to have two rescue options rather than one.

Then I got a text from the emergency guy asking for our location and to send a photo of the elevator ID, which we couldn’t find.

I resent the address and after we realised there was no way to escape without help, there wasn’t much else to do than to wait and avoid panic. Praise should be given to everyone in there. All of us kept relative calm, at least on the outside. Luckily no-one had to go to the toilet, and Thank God we weren’t trapped overnight (it can happen in office buildings) because there would be no space to lie down.

I found a WikiHow page on what to do when stuck in an elevator and in retrospect we did follow most of the pointers:

1: Remain calm and do not panic! (check),

2: If it is dark, find a light source (there were lights in our elevator).

3: Don’t escape through the hatches in the ceiling (we tried to open it but could not).

4: Close out any negative thoughts and think positive (check, mostly).

5: Press each of the floor buttons one by one. Then, try the “doors open” button. If none of the buttons works, the lift is broken, and you need to let someone know about (check).

6: Look through the gap between the doors of the lift (we couldn’t see anything).

7: Check the time. If you have waited for more than half an hour and nobody has come to get you out shout and bang the inside walls of the lift; take off your shoe and bang with that (people knew we were trapped).

8: Call for help using either an emergency or alarm button located on the elevator’s button panel or an emergency phone (check).

After some of the longest 4o minutes of my life, things started happening. We heard people talking in the stairs outside and we shouted to make sure they understood where we were. Some guy, I guess an elevator technician, managed to open the doors from the outside and we could crawl out. It felt like we had gotten life as a gift, so the party went on till sunrise, of course.

HISTORIC NORWEGIAN iGAMING HAPPENING

Wednesday was the first day of the conference and yada yada yada, we ended up on the beautiful rooftop of the Mediterranean Conference Centre for the networking event.

And as we were looking across the bay, where they were currently filming Gladiator 2, what has to be an historic happening in the iGaming industry took place: People from all cardinal directions of Norway were captured in one photo.

Around this time my son video-called and told me he had a joke I needed to hear. I could barely hear him over the music but it went something like this:

“A rabbit was feeling very hungry and went to the local shop on the corner. He asked if they had carrots. No, we don’t have carrots, replied the shop owner. The next day he went back to the same store and the same guy and asked again if they had carrots. Still, no carrots. On the third day the rabbit asked again, and the shop owner got annoyed and told the rabbit to stop asking for carrots. On the fourth day the rabbit went back and asked again. The shop owner told the rabbit that if it asked for carrots one more time, he would nail the rabbit to the wall. On the fifth day the rabbit went back again.

Do you have nails?

No. Do you have carrots?”.

We had so much fun, I lost track of time and came almost an hour late to the SiGMA VIP dinner at Chophouse in Sliema. No worries though, they still hadn’t ordered. This is when I was confronted with the dry cleaning bill during the funniest dinner of the week, closely rivalled by the All-in Global dinner at Sciacca Grill in Valletta on Thursday.

PAYING DRY CLEANING BILL WITH ROULETTE WINNINGS

What tilted me perhaps the most during the whole week in Malta were two incidents at Portomaso Casino on Friday evening.

First, I learned that they had a cash game with hole card detectors being “live” streamed that I wasn’t invited to – “live” meaning slightly delayed so the players could not receive information about the other players’ cards during the hands, but the viewers could see the players’ cards as they were playing. Late night cash games are my strongest poker game by far, so if any conference organisers are reading, this I would love to join in next time.

Instead I sat down for a “normal” cash game and to my left was no other than Vladan. After a few hands I convinced him to hit the roulette tables as promised, and on the way there he suggested I put the €150 on Zero, instead of Red. I was keen on having a fair chance of giving back the money for the dry cleaning bill so I insisted on Red.

Guess where the ball landed… If I would have listened to Vladan we would have won 35 x €150 = €5250. Bot no. So I bet €150 again on Red and this time I won and paid Vladan back, but it was big loss and not the small win who was grinding through our heads on the way back to the poker.

BATTERY NOW CHARGING FOR NOVEMBER

Day 6. Showers’ 10 Year Anniversary at Café del Mar. The biggest pool party in Europe, apparently. Hats off to Charlotte, Dean, Jo and everyone else who danced until the bitter end. I snuck out with a flat battery and a Bolt delivery from McDonalds… and slept for 11 hours.

By SiGMA week in November the batteries should be recharged. Make sure to sign up for our SiGMA Cup football on Monday and SiGMA Padel by All-in Global on Friday via kate@all-in.global.

All-in Global is the #1 provider of Language Solutions You Can Bet On. Contact us or request a quote here.