Irish Poker Open 2026 Is Full Speed After a Busy Thursday and Friday

Roope Tarmi Becomes the First Double Champion of the Series

Roope Tarmi decided that one high roller title this week was not going to cut it.

Only a few days after winning the €5,000 High Roller for €88,000, the Finnish pro returned to the Royal Dublin Society and added the €10,000 Super High Roller to his growing collection. This one was worth €79,945, and it also made him the first double champion of the 2026 Irish Open.

That leaves him one title short of matching Javier Francort’s triple-win run from last year, which is not a sentence many players get to say halfway through a festival.

The Super High Roller ended up drawing 13 entries and building a €130,000 prize pool, with only the top two places getting paid. Tarmi came into the final day with the chip lead and never really let the tournament drift away from him. Joris Ruijs picked up €43,000 for second, but once heads-up play got going, Tarmi wrapped things up quickly.

€10,000 Super High Roller Results

Alexander Tennback Turns a Satellite Into an America’s Cup Title

One of the better stories from the last two days came in the €350 America’s Cup, where Sweden’s Alexander Tennback turned a casual Main Event trip into something far more profitable.

As the story goes, Tennback had qualified online for the Main and decided to add a few side events while he was in Dublin. That turned out not to be the worst idea anybody has ever had. He outlasted a 795-entry field in the America’s Cup and walked away with the trophy plus €40,633 after a heads-up deal with Italy’s Alessandro Giombetti.

The two agreed a deal before playing on for the trophy and another €7,200, and it did not take Tennback long to finish the job. For a player whose previous live tournament record amounted to four cashes worth less than $4,000 in total, this was not just a good run. It was a complete rewrite of the résumé.

€350 America’s Cup Final Table Results

*Heads-up deal.

Sergiu Covrig Comes Through in the Spraggy Mystery Bounty

Romania’s Sergiu Covrig won the €550 Spraggy Mystery Bounty after outlasting a field of 721 entries, eventually finishing the job on Friday morning. His total payout came to €40,033 including bounties, while runner-up Baris Topuz actually walked away with €37,590 in combined winnings.

That would have been enough for a notable 2026 result, but the mystery format also did what mystery formats tend to do and produced a few side stories of its own. Former Irish Open champion Dan Wilson finished only 26th, yet still ended up with the third-largest overall payout after pulling €23,500 from the envelopes. The tournament may care about finishing position in theory, but in practice it clearly had other plans.

The event produced a €349,686 prize pool, split evenly between standard payouts and bounties, and paid the top 103 places.

€550 Spraggy Mystery Bounty Final Table Results

The Weekend Begins

If all of that sounds like enough poker for one week, the IPO schedule would disagree.

Tonight brings Day 2 of the record-breaking Main Event, which is obviously the main attraction, but it is far from the only thing running. The €550 JP Poker Masters Championship gets underway this afternoon, the two-day €3,000 High Roller 8-Max also starts today, and the €1,150 PLO Mystery Bounty 8-Max is set for this evening.

There is also one of the more entertaining new additions to the schedule in Old Dogs and Young Pups, a two-flight generational showdown that splits the field into 50-plus players on one side and 30-and-under players on the other. It follows the same kind of matched format as Kings and Queens, which means there is every chance the concept will produce at least a few stories before it is done.

So yes, the weekend is here. PokerListings will be following the next stretch directly from the floor in Dublin, so stay tuned.