Accomplished American player Gregory Olson has triumphed in the €350 Deaf NLH High Roller to win €4,845 – the third biggest cash of his live poker career and his first ever live cash outside of the USA.
Yesterday’s High Roller was the last event in our hugely successful “festival within a festival” for Deaf participants: there were 63 entries in all, creating a total prize pool of €18,944. Reporter Dom Clementson has been following along for nearly all five of the dedicated events for Deaf players and you can see his report from yesterday’s event here.
Additional reports and photo galleries are here:
- Anthony LoBue won the €120 Deaf PLO Championship
- Anthony Wilcox won €120 NLH Deaf Championship + pics
- Frank Grace won the €200 Deaf Championship Main Event + pics
- Robert Tronina won the €150 Deaf NLH Mystery Bounty
T
he 2026 Irish Open has been the first major poker festival in the world to lay on such a full schedule of dedicated tournaments and activities for Deaf competitors. And it’s clearly been well appreciated by the Deaf poker-playing community. Our social media team have been posting tons of content on X and Instagram as well .. with some posts going super-viral!
Anthony Wilcox’s all-in against Giuseppe Berlingeri in the NLH Deaf Championship has already had 150,000 views! And there are plenty more videos and images featuring Deaf competitors where that one came from !
For the last year, Irish Open Ambassador Darren Chow has been championing and promoting this year’s schedule all over the world as well as running live satellites in his native Toronto (and hats off to Canadian qualifier Jorge Tello who was runner-up in the €200 Deaf Championship Main Event.)
All the Deaf events had big fields – with the Main Event attracting 224 runners (compared to 29 last year.)
And it wasn’t just the tournaments that have had a big impact either. Multi-talented interpreter Romy O’Callaghan – fluent in numerous different sign languages – was at the RDS throughout Saturday’s proceedings and the Craic Den was absolutely rammed on Saturday night for a debut performance by Deaf comedian John Smith.
Deaf players have really thrown themselves into this year’s Irish Open and it’s more than clear that they’ve had an absolute ball at the Festival including huge and very enthusiastic rails for all the final tables.
Although the official schedule for Deaf players is now over, we hope many Deaf players will stay on at the RDS to take part in forthcoming Irish Open tournaments – as well as enjoying many more nights in the Craic Den!
Check out our live updates page for more info – just click the event title. And don’t forget you can also see all tourney results on the PS Live app.
Follow us on socials!!!! Instagram | X | YouTube | Facebook group
