A new tournament format debuted at the 2026 Irish Poker Open with the introduction of the Cuatro Bounty Events, of which two are scheduled during the two week long poker party at the Royal Dublin Society in the heat of the Irish capital. Event #14 Cuatro PLO High Roller was the first one to kick off and drew a field of 46 entries to generate a prize pool of €122,705.
It took more than 13 hours to not only unleash the hunt for the €3,000 bounty prizes but bring the number of hopefuls down to the final seven, who have all locked up a cash prize of €4,560 already. They all would like to score the €28,175 top prize and Irish Open trophy, though, and four local players have the opportunity to do so.
Seamus Cahill dominated the action on the final two tables with a master class of big stack power play and bagged up the most chips with 751,000. However, the only contender still in the mix who already claimed two of the 12 available bounties was none other than Irish Open ambassador Chris Dowling. One year ago, he won the €350 Big O Championship but couldn’t make it to the venue for a possible title defence. Another trophy for the cabinet at home wouldn’t be too shabby, and he sits third on the leaderboard with 431,000.
Only a fraction of a big blind ahead of that is the only Scandinavian in the mix as Juho Suutari bagged up 437,000. Michael Muldoon (328,000) is the other larger stack with Balazs Somodi sitting in the middle of the pack on 260,000. The two shortest stacks belong to Luke Walsh (94,000) and Adam Geyer (75,000).
When the action resumes, there will be five hands left in level 16 at blinds of 5,000-10,000 and a big blind ante of 10,000. Each level thereafter will feature 18 hands until a champion has been crowned and the final day is set to recommence at 1 p.m. local time on Saturday, March 28, 2026.
Seat assignments for the final day:
| Seat | Player | Country | Chip Count | Big Blinds |
| 2 | Juho Suutari | Finland | 437,000 | 44 |
| 3 | Chris Dowling | Ireland | 431,000 | 43 |
| 4 | Balazs Somodi | Hungary | 260,000 | 26 |
| 5 | Michael Muldoon | Ireland | 328,000 | 33 |
| 6 | Adam Geyer | United States | 75,000 | 8 |
| 8 | Luke Walsh | Ireland | 94,000 | 9 |
| 9 | Seamus Cahill | Ireland | 751,000 | 75 |
Among the well-known casualties in the field were Ilari “Ziigmund” Sahamies, Kevin Allen, yesterday’s Big O Championship runner-up Akseli Paalanen, Richard “Chufty” Ashby, John O’Shea, Mark Buckley and Tommi Lankinen.
On the bounty bubble, Shane Reihill was caught with his fingers in the cookie jar when his flop jam ran right into the top full house of Ionut Moldovan. However, there was no happy end for the Romanian thereafter, as he fell victim to Cahill’s aggression in the next seat. It took numerous attempts to even bring the field down to one table and the cash bubble thereafter witnessed more than a dozen double-ups.
Eventually, Dowling was up against Max Stenberg and a case of “too many outs” actually got there with a wrap and flush draw. Whether or not the Irish Open ambassador will claim trophies in back-to-back years remains to be seen and you can read all about it right here after everyone had a couple hours of sleep.
