Over €500,000 in the prize pool
There has never been a Super High Roller MTT* at the Irish Open before, longest-running European poker festival though it is. For 2025, that changed, with 53 players creating a prize pool of over half a million Euros. Overcoming one of the toughest fields of the festival, Irishman Robbie Toan secured €163,800 for taking down the €5,000 SHR, winning his first live tournament in the process.
*Strictly, there was a €10,000 SHR heads up eleven years ago, won by Mark Buckley for €19,400, but that’s not really the same thing. It seems that the players are ready now to put the Super in front of High Roller in a serious manner.
It seems that the bigger the buy-in, the longer the lie-in. It was no surprise that level one started on one short-handed table, but it soon filled up with some of the best-known players from around the world, including Steve O’Dwyer (pictured at top, in his natural habitat, an SHR), John Duthie, Juha Helppi and Anton Bergstrom.
Day 2 began with 25 of them left, led by Mengshi Tian. Tian exited with two tables remaining; one off the official final table (and the bubble), Jamie Dwan was then eliminated by Michel Molenaar to leave eight players and seven prizes.
They then got to enjoy the tensest type of 15-minute break, knowing one of them would not be paying a visit to the cash desk when their chips were gone. The bubble burst when Gilles Simon got his last chips in preflop against Adrian Cazacu in a dominating spot but failed to hold up. Simon won PokerStars’ Dare to Stream competition in 2019 (picking up a Platinum Pass) and a year later took down the inaugural EPT Cyprus Main Event.
Christopher Nguyen was the first to be eliminated in the money; having doubled up Adrian Cazacu he then fell at his hands. He was followed to the rail by Michel Molenaar (6th for €34,000), whose chips kept start-of-final leader Toan’s stack growing.
Rising alongside him was Cazacu, who took out the next three players: Simon Wilson (5th for €42,800) over the course of two pots then Severi Palmu blind-on-blind (4th for €55,400). He finished this trio of eliminations with Klemens Roiter, again calling in the big blind to a small blind shove.
This late-stage tear meant that Cazacu enjoyed nearly a 2:1 chip lead at the start of heads up play. He extended it to nearly 4:1 – but a dramatic double through with ten-eight suited saw the start of the Toan comeback. When Toan doubled again (with a fortunate spiking ace-jack against Cazacu’s ace-king), it was the beginning of the end for the Romanian, who had to settle for second place (€108,300).
€10,000 Super High Roller Results
1 Robbie Toan (Ireland) – €163,800
2 Adrian Cazacu (Romania) – €108,300
3 Klemens Roiter (Austria) – €73,100
4 Severi Palmu (Finland) – €55,400
5 Simon Wilson (Ireland) – €42,800
6 Michel Molenaar (Netherlands) – €34,000
7 Christopher Nguyen (Austria) – €26,500
