The four card aficionados once again show-cased their talents during the 2026 Irish Open at the iconic Royal Dublin Society and a small but elite field emerged in Event #38 PLO High Roller, which drew a total of 27 entrants. Only the top 15% of them were paid and Day 1 saw them whittled down to the final four contestants before they bagged up the chips late at night.
With a total of €124,403 up for grabs, the four musketeers have locked up a payday of at least €14,950 and the odds-on favourite to lift the trophy for the winner shots later today is Estonia’s Steven Tool with a stack of 619,000. In a comfortable second place is Hungarian PLO specialist Balazs Somodi (422,000) while Ruslan Nazarenko (191,000) and Karl Hedderman (118,000) bring up the bottom of the leaderboard.
Somodi already ran deep in a previous Omaha tournament in the opening days of the festival in Dublin but missed out on the trophy when Chris Dowling ran hot on the final day of the Cuatro PLO High Roller. The Irish Open ambassador didn’t cash this time and busted on the final two tables, as did PokerStars ambassador Parker Talbot. With many Scandinavians in the mix, the bubble boy was Max Stenberg from Sweden to conclude the action of Day 1.
The action is set to resume in level 15 with blinds of 4,000-8,000 and a big blind ante of 8,000, which gives the bottom stacks still enough wiggle room for the restart at 1 p.m. local time. They will be playing 18 hands per level until a winner has been crowned and you can follow the action of the final day right here on the Irish Open website.
