Pudel chopped three-way with Nikolaos Angelou Konstas and Fabian Rolli
“Now you’ve got a trophy and a potato!”
The €1,150 Luxon Mystery Bounty has crowned Nils Pudel as its champion after an astonishing final table comeback that eventually saw him make a deal with Nikolaos Angelou Konstas (€71,090) and Fabian Rolli (€73,480) to take €67,510 in prize money from the non-bounty half of the prize pool.
After six days of entry flights, field-whittling and bounty drawing a total of €1,191,450 in prize money has been awarded. It was paid in both regular prizes and mirroring bounties, with Jorge Rios drawing the biggest bounty (€102,600) on Day 2.
With 1,222 total entries (669 unique) and 50 countries represented, this first event on the 2025 Irish Open schedule set the tone early for the bumper international fields – and prize pools – to come.
Pudel, who originally hails from Hanover in Germany, was a 2019 PokerStars Platinum Pass winner and is a full-time poker pro whose accomplishments include making the final tables at EPT London in 2022 and the WSOPE Main Event the following year. This win has bumped his live total cashes over the $1 million mark, but at times it seemed an unlikely outcome.
Maxim Petrov and Florian Duta started the final table with the shortest stacks, with the former running nines into Nils Pudel’s jacks early on. He was followed to the rail by the latter when Fabian Rolli, having doubled through start-of-day chip leader Konstas, found himself comfortably able to afford to hunt Duta’s bounty.
Rolli continued his roll by eliminating Tobias Peters in 6th (€20,785) – after both players tabled the same hand after an all-in-and-call preflop. What Rolli initially described as a “fair fight” became one of those bust-outs players remember with a wince.
The last Irish player standing, Patrick Eagers, collected €27,000 for 5th place after he lost his bounty to Konstas, who then let Rolli get back to busting the opposition; he promptly eliminated Yannick Jobin in 4th place (€35,080).
Three-handed, it looked like a two-horse race: with 27 million apiece, Rolli and Konstas were guaranteed to be pouncing on the bounty of Pudel (6 million) with abandon. After Konstas took another pot from him, a last-chance roll of the dice with a pair of fives and five big blinds saw the start of a dramatic comeback.
Two full doubles from this point, and Pudel demonstrated just how quickly things can change in no limit Hold’em: he leaped into a chip lead that must have seemed all but impossible a level before. As stacks evened out, a deal was struck, chopping the remaining prizes according to ICM.
Concerning the chop, Pudel said, “Every one of us three was chip leader today at some point. It was best to just chop it up three ways because it was pretty top-heavy, this tournament.”
Finally, he made his winner interview while holding a decorated potato that had been with him as a starchy mascot. “The German guys, xflixx [PokerStars Ambassador Felix Schneiders] gave it to me on the beginning of Day 3,” he explained. “Maybe I have to play with this potato the whole time in Dublin. But maybe that’s a bit unfair…”
Final Table Results
1 Nils Pudel (Germany) – €67,510 + €4,000 Mediterranean Poker Party package
2 Nikolaos Angelou Konstas (Greece) – €71,090
3 Fabian Rolli (Switzerland) – €73,480
4 Yannick Jobin (Switzerland) – €35,080
5 Patrick Eagers (Ireland) – €27,000
6 Tobias Peters (Netherlands) – €20,785
7 Florian Duta (Romania) – €15,980
8 Maksim Petrov (Estonia) – €12,280
Click here for full payouts including bounty additions.
