It’s all about hybrids these days and the poker world is no exception. WPT Global – WPTG – has accelerated that tendency in Ireland, with turbo, over the last couple of years, and the International Poker Open coming to the Bonnington Hotel in Dublin this October will be one of the finest demonstrations yet of this hybrid model. With a delicious Irish flavour.

Online is marrying live, WPTG is the matchmaker, the IPO is the priest and the Bonnington is the church.

And it’s all helping to make poker more accessible to the humbler, less professional poker player in Ireland than ever before.

This year, entry to the IPO Main Event, with a minimum guarantee of €200,000, will cost a walk-in player €350. But your road there could begin for as little as $4.40.

Those daily online feeders lead into $44 final satellites every Monday and Thursday at 8pm Irish time, with two €350 Main Event seats guaranteed in each. And you can keep trying right up until the final opportunity on October 18.

Last year’s Main Event saw Dublin’s Noel Murphy take the title and €42,340, with plenty of Irish interest surrounding him. Keith Smith took third for €20,640, another Irish player listed as C.C. finished fourth for the same amount, and Ray Wheatley made seventh for €6,550. Irish success continued in the side events too, with John Farrell taking down the Mini Main and Tomas Brady winning the Monday Last Chance.

And WPTG was already having a considerable effect on how people got there. More than 60 players qualified for the 2025 IPO through WPT Global satellites, while another 50 entries came through its OnLive Day 1.

So this hybrid business is already a bit more than a fancy new hi-jacked term….

SO WHY A HYBRID?

There are hybrid cars, bikes, coffee makers, golf clubs, energy systems and toothbrushes (don’t ask me), so what’s the big deal? Who wants the mongrel when you can have the pure-bred?

It turns out there are loads of reasons, but the main ones are usually efficiency and convenience – meeting more people’s needs, pockets and lifestyles.

Modern poker is no exception.

Combining the virtual with the real is proving to suit an awful lot of players and, what’s more, you can now not only qualify for a live event or festival online, but actually play your Day 1 in the comfort of your own home, man-cave or office.

For this year’s IPO, that Online Day 1 takes place on WPT Global on Sunday, October 18 at 8pm Irish time. Bag your stack there and you can arrive at the Bonnington for Day 2 with your virtual chips tucked firmly under your real arm.

That matters for Irish players living outside Dublin too. A Day 1 played from home can mean one less day’s travel, accommodation and expense before you have even reached the business end of a tournament.

Qualifying online for live events is hardly new, of course. But WPTG has been pushing the online/live crossover particularly hard in Irish poker through satellites, OnLive Day 1s, partnerships with Irish festivals and, increasingly, Irish players representing the brand.

The IPO is another significant piece of that jigsaw.

THE IRISH CONNECTION

There are already some familiar Irish faces in the WPTG camp.

Pádraig “Smidge” O’Neill and Shane Murphy have both demonstrated the OnLive concept rather nicely themselves. During this year’s Dublin Poker Festival, both bagged stacks through the online Day 1 before moving into the live tournament. Murphy eventually recorded what was then his biggest live cash, €2,080 for 25th in the European Deepstack Championship.

O’Neill needs little introduction to Irish poker followers. The EPT Prague champion has already proved he can mix it at the very highest level, but even a player of his calibre can apparently appreciate the attraction of getting Day 1 done without putting his shoes on.

Fintan Hand

And then, of course, there is WPTG’s own Irish ambassador, Mr EasyWithAces himself, Fintan Hand.

Hand is almost the epitome of the hybrid player. The Dubliner began his poker life in the very traditional surroundings of the Fitzwilliam Casino before becoming one of the best-known Irish online players and streamers. After more than eight years representing PokerStars, he joined WPT Global at the beginning of 2026, with WPTG itself saying that its plans for poker in Ireland played a significant role in his decision.

So the journey has almost come full circle: Dublin card room to online poker, streaming and international success, and back to helping put Irish live poker in front of an online audience.

Good man, Finto. Keep ’em coming.

Patrick Tardif, from Canada, will also be making the trip across the pond. Ambassador to WPT Global, Patrick made the trip across for the Dublin Poker Festival back in February, where he cashed the European Deepstack.

Another name worth keeping an eye out for at the Bonnington is Paul Carr. The Irish Poker Tour Team Pro already has a ticket for this year’s IPO and has plenty of previous form at the festival.

Carr finished eighth in the 2022 IPO Main Event for €3,880 and cashed the 2024 Main Event, but did considerably better in another event that year – winning the €550 Leslie McLean High Roller for €7,083.

And Carr is perhaps particularly appropriate to this story. While he famously came second in the 2010 Irish Open for a rather less humble €312,600, much of his long poker record has been built grinding events around Ireland rather than permanently chasing the biggest tournaments across the globe.

In other words, exactly the sort of player who demonstrates that there is a very healthy poker life outside the nosebleed stakes.

IPO – Everyman’s card-table

Since its inception in 2007, the IPO seemed to have made a decision to bring poker onto the main street; to take it out of the boudoirs of the high rollers and ten-gallon hat wearers and make it just one step away from your local game up the road in the pub or neighbour’s house. It was a little less daunting and because the guarantees were a bit lower, international players weren’t as plentiful and the whole tournament was that bit…familiar.

But time nor tide waits for a man, and the International Poker Open has established its name firmly in the hearts and bank-rolls of our top players.  And while keeping the traditional players, WPTG’s involvement has sent it on a new journey, embracing quite beautifully the changes that are inevitable in this life.

Indeed, there is something rather pleasing about the journey. Poker technology has become vastly more sophisticated, prize pools have grown and online poker has changed how players enter the game altogether – yet the modern route can now begin with $4.40.

Mr or Ms Joe Soap can sit at home, find their way through a feeder and satellite, potentially play Day 1 from the sofa and end up sitting beside a seasoned professional at the Bonnington with exactly the same cards in front of them.

Whether Joe Soap then relieves the professional of all his chips is, of course, another matter entirely.

But we can dream. A cat can look at a king. Or sit in his lap.

THE BONNINGTON – AN OLD POKER HOME

And when the online part is over, there could hardly be a more appropriate place for the live part to begin.

The Bonnington, sits in Whitehall on the Swords Road in Dublin 9 and is no stranger to the poker world.

The hotel has been associated with major Irish poker for years and its location is certainly convenient for players far and wide: between Dublin Airport and the city centre, close to major routes and served by public transport.

The card room itself is in the hotel’s main conference area, directly off the lobby, making registration and access simple – although don’t forget your government-issued photo ID, guys.

And then there is McGettigan’s.

The hotel pub has surely witnessed enough post-poker analysis over the years to qualify for an honorary degree in the subject: winning hands reconstructed, bad beats dissected and no doubt the occasional player quietly crying into his pint while insisting that there was absolutely no way the other lad should have called.

But sure you can always jump in their fabulous pool, sweat it out in the sauna or get massaged in the spa to calm the nerve, for this treasure or a hotel has a leisure centre and spa to round off a thoroughly enjoyable few days, with maybe a few quid extra in your pocket.

This October, another generation arrives. Old faces, new faces. Old ways, new ways.

The IPO festival runs from October 20-26, with the €350 Main Event at its centre alongside a full programme of side events. But for some of those players, the tournament will actually have begun days earlier – and miles away – on a laptop or phone.

That is perhaps the most interesting part of WPT Global’s growing relationship with Irish poker. It is not trying to replace the live game that Ireland does so well. Increasingly, the online game is being used as the road into it.

Old-style Irish poker is still there: the tables, the characters, the stories, the craic and the inevitable forensic examination of a hand over a pint afterwards.

The road to the table just looks a little different these days.

Hybrid indeed.