Ontario poker players have a lot to celebrate this week with the news that PokerStars is launching online satellites in their province for the €1 million guaranteed Irish Open Main Event.
The Irish Open is hugely popular with Canadians and dozens fly over every year to take part in the festival and enjoy the unique Irish Open atmosphere. Ontarians will be thrilled that they can now – for the first time – win their way into the event online.
The 2024 Irish Open is taking place from March 25 to April 1 at the historic Royal Dublin Society. As well as the €1,150 Main Event, the 2024 schedule also includes the Mini Irish Open. This ground-breaking event only costs €200 to enter but guarantees a whopping €500k prize pool – the largest guarantee for a buy-in of this size in Irish poker history. Click here for the full 2024 schedule.
PokerStars, which obtained its Ontario licence in 2022, will be offering weekly Irish Open qualifiers with prize packages worth C$3,500 up for grabs. The satellites kick off this Sunday, January 14 at 8pm Eastern Standard Time. The package comprises the C$1,730 Main Event buy-in plus C$1,770 in expenses.
PokerStars qualifiers are also running on .com and other regional sites with 350+ players across Europe guaranteed to win seats or packages.
Event organiser Paul O’Reilly said: “Last year the Irish Open broke all records and that’s certainly down to our amazing partnership with PokerStars and Paddy Power. We are more than excited that PokerStars Ontario is now on board as we know from personal experience just how much Canadians love the Irish Open. They have really adopted the event as their own and having online qualifiers running on PokerStars Ontario is going to ensure that even more Canadians can come over to Dublin and take part.”
In 2023, a total of 350 players qualified on PokerStars – the highest number of players that PokerStars has ever qualified for a partner event. Champion David Docherty won his ticket online on PokerStars for $109 and turned that into a huge €365,000 first prize. Back in 2017 Griffin Benger, one of Ontario’s most successful live tournament players, won the Main Event for €200,000.
