Well, it’s heating up in the Battle of the Coaches!
Dara O’Kearney’s Simplify Poker site and Faraz Jaka’s Jaka Coaching have thrown themselves into this year’s Irish Open in highly combative mode.
They’re running a points-based challenge that pits their students against each other throughout the 12-day 2026 Irish Open festival.
Team Jaka mostly involves Americans, while Team SimplifyPoker is more notably European.
At the start of each day, team leaders Dara O’Kearney for Simplify and Michael Dwyer from Jaka nominate who is taking part in what, and when. The aim is to ensure each team is fielding the same number of players in any given event, and there’s also a five-event cap for each player across the festival.
Well, so far, it’s Team Jaka in the lead, with 22,918 points versus 6,585 for Dara O’Kearney’s Team Simplify Poker. (You don’t want to know more about the scoring system, trust us!)
Jaka team captain Michael Dwyer said: “We got out of the traps quickly in the Luxon Mystery bounty, with the good fortune of my winning a 10k bounty! And our team has been cashing regularly, notably our Jaka ladies. Bea Berman has two cashes and Nan Min has one. But we know it’s way too early to be getting excited.”
Team Simplify captain Dara O’Kearney said: “We had the better Day 1a in the Main Event with Baris Topuz (from Turkey) top of the Simplify Poker list, bagging 378k. Newly-appoinated PokerStars Ambassador David Lappin was another Simplify notable to bag with 296k chips.”
Both teams are sure of one thing – it’s going to be a battle to the finish, and it’s likely that performances in the €2.5 million guaranteed Main Event – currently 2.5 hours into Day 1c – will end up deciding it.
