Live streamed final table!
Jamie Dwan wins Irish Open lotto - and makes last dozen of €1,150 Mystery Bounty
Umberto Ruggeri is out in front after Day 3 of the Main Event, having outlasted all but 18 of the record-breaking 4,562-runner field. Ruggeri nearly made back-to-back EPT Prague Main Event final tables (2024 and this year) and has put himself into contention to win this most prestigious of European titles.
Day 3 of the €1,150 Irish Open Main Event, the largest tournament ever held in Ireland, was never likely to set a final table in ten levels. In fact, 19 players will return for Day 4 and play (slightly longer) to determine a winner on Monday. That winner will take home €600,000 from the €4,447,950 total prize pool, some of which has already been awarded to players exiting in 671st place and higher. Click the PAYOUTS tab on the live updates page for all those paid-out players’ names.
Exiting just before the close of play was 2013 Irish Open Main Event champion Ian Simpson, whose 20th place (€19,200) was both satisfying and frustrating: “You always want more!” he said as he left the Royal Dublin Society, having put in a strong bid for a second title. Also eliminated in the money on Sunday were PokerStars Ambassador Parker Talbot (43rd for €9,500), 2022 Irish Open Main Event champion (and 14th on the worldwide all-time tournament money list) Steve O’Dwyer (50th), Katie Swift (93rd), and Mateusz Moolhuisen (217th).
In the closing minutes of Day 3, a huge aces vs. kings preflop match-up shipped an enormous pot to Brandon Harris, the flip side of which pushed Yuriy Boyko down to 17th in chips overnight.
Top nine chip counts for Day 4:
1 Umberto Ruggeri (Italy) – 24,675,000
2 Gregory King (Ireland) – 22,000,000
3 Brandon Harris (United Kingdom) – 19,600,000
4 Michel Karim (Sweden) – 19,525,000
5 David Pollock (Ireland) – 17,050,000
6 Panteleimon Pontos (Greece) – 17,000,000
7 Georgios Skarparis (Cyprus) – 16,700,000
8 Robert Fluereci (Romania) – 14,850,000
9 Joe O’Donaill (Ireland) – 12,850,000
Play resumes at 13:00, so, as is traditional (and eminently sensible) with cards-up broadcasting, the livestream on PokerStars TV and Twitch will begin at 13:30.
Reporting continues on PokerNews until the new Irish Open champion is crowned; Main Event galleries can be found on Flickr.
Revealing of the Irish Open Lotto Winner Almost Its Own Side Event
The traditional Irish Open lotto – a simple ‘buy a ticket, get a chance at all the money in a big bag’ format – took place on Sunday, with all clocks paused for a couple of minutes as the draw was made. The prize was over €52,000 – the biggest in Irish Open history.
As is cruelly, amusingly traditional here, the first name chosen doesn’t win the money, they just get the pity of 1,000 poker players (and, this year, a stuffed PokerStars shark). Once it was determined that ‘Michaela’ wouldn’t be claiming the cash, ticket number 4161 was drawn. That, along with 99 others, belonged to Jamie Dwan, whose strong approach to the gamble paid off.
For more pictures of this bag of cash, and the extraordinary scenes in the 80’s Players’ Party Sunday night, visit the rolling 2025 Gallery, which features all of the off-the-felt (and some of the on-the-felt) action from this year’s Irish Open.
