Over 120 Deaf players have already registered for the 2026 Irish Open with dozens more set to compete at this year’s festival. The vast majority of the registered players are aiming to play both the €200 Irish Open Deaf Championship and the €350 High Roller and hail from all over the world including Mexico, USA, Canada, Scandinavia and Australia.
The 2026 Irish Open will feature a “festival within a festival” for Deaf players. As well as the Deaf Championship and €350 High Roller, the 2026 schedule also includes a €120 buy-in PLO Championship, €120 buy-in NLHE Championship and a €150 Mystery Bounty.
Canadians Vasyl Dmytryshyn, Jorge Tello and Edward MacKey are all set to make their first ever visits to the festival after winning their $2,000 CAD packages in live satellites held in Toronto. Their packages include return flights to Dublin, five nights’ accommodation, and two tournament entries – one for the €200 Irish Open Deaf Championship and one for the €350 Deaf Championship High Roller.
Vasyl, 35, who lived in Ukraine before moving to Vancouver, won his Irish Open package in a satellite held during the 7th Canada Deaf Poker Tour which ran October 3-4 at the Toronto Poker Syndicate. Tello won his package in a €110 live satellite held at “The Poker Place” in Toronto in December while MacKey scooped his trip to Dublin in the January edition.
Other players set to compete include Brandon van Niekerk from Australia and German player Sebastian Einbeck who recently outlasted a 200-entry field to take down the CPM Closer during the Czech Poker Masters in Rozvadov. Einbeck is also a two-time finalist at Deaf Poker Barcelona.
Irish Open Ambassador Darren Chow, who has organised all three live satellites in Toronto and runs the Irish Open player list via the Deaf Poker Ireland and World Deaf PokerNews facebook groups, said: “I’m really pleased with how things are progressing. We already have 115 players pre-registered from all over the world, and my goal is to exceed 150 participants this year. We have such a great line-up of events coming up with the Main Event, a PLO tournament, NLH, Mystery Bounty and the High Roller.
“We’re also very excited about the performance by John Smith in the Craic Den. He’s a well-established Deaf comedian from the UK and will be appearing on the Saturday night following the final of the Deaf Poker Championship.
I’m really looking forward to the Irish Open and will be heading there after traveling through Southeast Asia for two months playing lots of major poker events.”
Lucky Shark Deaf Poker online satellites
In addition to the live sats that Darren Chow has been organising in Canada, the Lucky Shark Deaf Poker facebook group has been running a series of online satellites in Europe. So far there have been three winners – from Germany, Moldova and Ireland – with another three satellites coming up.
Up for grabs are €850 packages which include the €200 buy-in for the Deaf Poker Championship Main Event. In addition, Lucky Shark is giving away a €1,000 bonus to any player who ends up winning the Main Event with their first bullet after qualifying on Lucky Shark.
The forthcoming three-step satellites are running January 12-13, February 2-3 and March 2-3. Each satellite features a €35 buy-in final.
