Million Euro guarantee eclipsed
The numbers are in for the €1,150 Luxon Mystery Bounty and they are huge. The €1,000,000 guarantee hasn’t just been hit, it’s been comfortably surpassed, with 1,222 entrants over four starting flights. The winner will take home a six-figure score from the total €1,191,450 prize pool, and someone (maybe that person, if they’re one of the luckiest alive) will draw a bounty of the same amount!
- Day 1a entries – 132 (42 remaining)
- Day 1b entries – 268 (76 remaining)
- Day 1c entries – 558 (153 remaining)
- Day 1d entries – 264 (114 remaining)
With just a single re-entry allowed per flight this number of entries represents an enormous turnout (669 unique) for this relatively new but incredibly popular format of tournament poker.
This type of Mystery Bounty mirrors the prize pool in the bounties. So, a first prize equivalent bounty lurks somewhere (as do a number of min-cash equivalents, of course). One of the 385 total Day 2 players will pull it.
Every year the Irish Open seems to be breaking some kind of record, whether it be for attendance or the largest number of people in promotional ‘lucky pants’ (probably) but this is a milestone and surely an indicator of how busy the €2,500,000 Guaranteed Main Event will be. The Royal Dublin Society is a big venue, but is it big enough for the 2025 Irish Open?
For anyone who doesn’t know how the Mystery Bounty works: the prize pool is split between ‘regular’ payouts for the winner (and around 15% of the field) and a series of ‘mystery bounties’ that are awarded after the tournament reaches the money. At this point all players are given a mystery bounty token. When they are eliminated, their terminator collects the token and uses it to draw an envelope from a chest (a real, pirate treasure type affair). The prize in the envelope is the mystery bounty (more accurately just a bounty when it’s been opened).
Towards the top of the chip counts lie prior Irish Open Main Event winner Patrick Clarke, plus last year’s runner up Ninh Van Hiep, and Niall Farrell. PokerStars Ambassadors Benjamin and Marle Spragg are still representing on Day 2 – as they are in the Shamrock Showdown.
Day two commences at 12:00; check chip counts and follow all the action live on PokerNews.
Galleries from the Mystery Bounty can be found here.
