Irish Poker Tour
At the Irish Poker Tour, Ireland’s leading live poker company, we pride ourselves on timely, well-organized, relaxed, and player-friendly tournaments. Through tried and tested approaches and a passionate team, we have the formula to make the Irish Poker Tour a truly memorable experience for you.
Upcoming Events
| Dates | Festival | Location | Guarantee | Main Event Buy In |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| March 12 - 15 | €100k for €100 | Dublin | €160K+ | €100 |
| April 29 - May 4 | The Monster 2026 | Dublin | €450K+ | €200 |
| June 26 - 28 | Northern Poker Festival 2026 | Dundalk | €100K+ | €300 |
| July 23 - 26 | Summer In Dublin 2026 | Dublin | €275K+ | €300 |
| October 13 - 18 | Killarney Poker Festival | Killarney | TBA | TBA |
| November 3 - 8 | Glasgow Poker Festival | Glasgow | TBA | TBA |
Up Next
♠️ Carrick-On-Shannon ♠️
— Irish Poker Tour (@IrishPokerTour) February 11, 2026
We’re bringing the Irish Poker Tour back to the Landmark Hotel for another monster one-day event this time with a €25,000 GUARANTEE 🤑
📍 Landmark Hotel, Carrick-On-Shannon
🗓 Saturday 7th March 2026
💰 €200 Buy-In | €25,000 GTD Main Event
🕐 1pm… pic.twitter.com/8fPwzxPsQy
News
June Jenkins – Taking over the Irish Felt
June Jenkins: A Familiar Face on Ireland’s Poker Stage
June Jenkins might not be a full-time player on the Irish circuit, but when she visits, she makes a serious impact. This week, she returned to Dublin for the Dublin Poker Festival and once again shone. Jenkins won the Tuesday Daily Turbo event, pocketing €1,367, and took third in the Women’s Championship with €1,100. These wins add to an already impressive record: last year, she took down the Killarney 300, and she also claimed a high roller event in Dublin with the Irish Poker Tour.
Though based elsewhere, Ireland has become a home away from home for Jenkins. She’s a close friend of Dara O’Kearney and often drops into key events. Her latest successes bring her live earnings to over $241,453, now ranking her 15,372nd on the all-time money list. In a January interview after her Galway win, Jenkins emphasized her love for these big Irish stages and her desire to keep challenging herself. As 2026 unfolds, it’s clear that Jenkins is a force to be reckoned with, bringing her flair and tenacity each time she returns to Irish felt.
The Chip Race Co-Sponsored by PokerStars and Paddy Power Poker
The Chip Race Co-Sponsored by PokerStars and Paddy Power Poker
In a major announcement, Dara O’Kearney revealed that The Chip Race will now be co-sponsored by both PokerStars and Paddy Power Poker for the next year. This partnership means fans will continue to enjoy The Chip Race, The Lock-In, and their strategy clips for free, thanks to the two companies. As Dara shared:
“As part of the ambassador deals that David and I have agreed, the Chip Race will be sponsored by both sites for the next year. This means fans of the show can enjoy everything we do: the Chip Race, the Lock In and the strategy clips, for free thanks to Paddy and Stars. We also launched the Chip Race on Patreon where super fans of the show can support us and enjoy exclusive extra bonus content: hand breakdowns, bonus questions to guests on the show, hot takes on the latest issues and more.”
After everyone wondered what would happen next, now that David and Dara had signed their deals with Stars and Paddy Power, we have our answer. Like a plot unraveling in a noir film, the future of The Chip Race is now unmistakable…stronger, bolder, and with a solid home at the very heart of the poker world.
Dara O’Kearney and David Lappin – Sign deals with Paddy Power Poker and Pokerstars
Dara O’Kearney and David Lappin. A dynamic duo. Carved from authenticity, ETCHED in our minds every single month via the Chip Race (and Dara’s Shirts on the IPT Live circuit)
It’s been a big week for our premier poker voices. One they will remember.
Dara O Kearney signs with Paddy Power Power as Ambassador while Mr David K. Lappin is the Newest Pokerstars Team Pro.
Both broke the news over the past 24 hours and we reached out to the Chip Race Co-hosts
Speaking with Live Poker Updates this week David told me :
“ The most important thing for Dara and I was to partner with a company we could trust, a company that cares about good poker, by which I mean safe poker for the players. In the end, we found two of them! Dara is one of the game’s great ambassadors and he will be an incredible asset for paddypowerpoker.
I am very fortunate to be chosen by Pokerstars and I will do my utmost to give them value in the coming year by championing their live events, their satellite schedule and their online offering. In terms of The Chip Race, watch this space. We have a big announcement coming soon.
Dara O Kearney echoed the sentiment of his co-host.
“I’m delighted and honoured to be joining such a quintessentially Irish success story. When I started playing 20 years ago, Paddy was the main site I grinded on and it’s been a constant for me ever since. While I was lucky enough to have a number of different offers this time around, it was important to me to choose a company I trust on integrity issues, and can have a bit of craic with”
We couldn’t be happier for the 2 guys and we wish them all the very best on their latest adventure!
Slowplaying
When facing an overly aggressive player, most players revert to slowplaying their hand. There is a logic to it; the player is betting too much. Why would we want to scare them off by playing the hand aggressively?
The solvers have shown us what smart players already knew, which is that the way to deal with maniacs is to fight fire with fire. We want to take the fight to them, with a strong range, and capitalise when they come over the top of you.
Even the biggest Maniacs can sense when you seem too happy to check call every street.
There are, however, times when it is correct to slow play your hand.
A rough guideline for when to slow play is when we:
- Heavily block value
- Have a checking range we want to protect
- Are facing a polarised range
- Have a hand that doesn’t need protection
We want to block value, that means we have such a strong hand that it’s hard for our opponent have much of anything. This means they have lots of bluffs, and when they have lots of bluffs, we don’t want to bet and let them get away cheaply.
We also want hands in our range that naturally want to check/call. If our weaker hands don’t check/call too, then we will make it very obvious when we are slow playing a monster. This is what we mean by protecting our checking range.
Finally, we slow play hands that do not benefit from protection. Slowplaying a hand like TT on an 8 high board is a bad idea because so many bad cards can come for us, which hit a bluffer’s range. 88 on an 8 high board, however, is much harder to crack.
A natural slow play example
A classic example would be if we were the BB with 99 and the flop comes 952 rainbow.
We block a lot of value, all the 9x, so if we played the hand aggressively, it would lead to a lot of folds. So check/raising would be an error here.
While we crush the flop, our range misses this board a lot, so we have a lot of natural checks and check/calls that we want to protect. If we didn’t check/call the nuts on this flop, our opponent could run all over us.
Our opponent also misses this board a lot, and this is an overbet board, so we are up against a polarised range. If we raise here, all we do is fold out the bluffs.
Finally, we are not worried about protecting our hand, so there is no reason to bet to deny equity in the way which we might with TT here. We want our opponent to improve a little.
Now that you know the best time to slow play your hand, don’t overdo it. It is still often better to go with the wise advice of Doyle Brunson, which is to never slow play your big hands, and instead just hope your opponent has something they can call with.
If you enjoy this sort of free strategy content, there’s a strategy segment in every episode of my podcast The Chip Race. We also launched on Patreon where we will be putting bonus content that includes
🧠 Strategy hands
💬 Topical discussions
🔥 Hot takes
🙈 Behind the scenes
🗣️ Bonus Qs with guests
🙋♀️ Subscriber Q&As
💭 Nostalgic reminiscences
Athlone €30K In A Day Wrap
The Good, The Bad Beats & The Old Schoolers – Athlone on a Saturday Night
Athlone saw the good, the bad beats, and the old school grit of Graydon and Ainsworth.
All of it. On a Saturday night in Athlone.
Main Event – €39,168 Prize Pool
Strong numbers from the off and that familiar Athlone buzz humming around the room. By shortly after 4pm the guarantee was well covered, and by the close of registration the prize pool had climbed to €39,168, with 240 entries locked in.
The first pause of the night wasn’t for a bust-out — it was for romance.
The Athlone Springs Hotel staff appeared with two bouquets of roses for Moya Murphy, sent by her partner Kieran. A classy touch. Whether it was fate or flowers, the run-good followed. Moya surged to the top of the chip counts, bagging 600,000 heading into the final four tables and it looked like this was going to be her night.
Earlier drama saw Laura Crasenco shove Robbie Bryant all-in on the turn with a straight draw. Robbie held top pair, made the call, and the draw missed. Laura became the unlucky bubble, and just like that the remaining 24 players were in the money, all chasing a very tasty €10,000 top prize.
The Midlands flag flew deep once again. Robbie Bryant carried it proudly, finishing 6th for €1,895 for the Midlands Card Club. But the story of the night remained Moya Murphy. She entered the final nine with a commanding 2,195,000 and never really let the momentum slip, riding that wave all the way to the business end of the tournament where she finished in 4th for €3,035. Moya has shown great consistency over the past year and is surely making a case for breakout player of 2026. Well done Moya.
That left our 2025 rising star Killian Farrell 3 way with Ronan Gilligan and Gerard Keenan.
After Mr Keenan aka Cash King fell in 3rd , Killian and Ronan resumed play before coming to a heads up deal once both players were even in chips.
Killian takes the trophy and the points! Already he is being tipped to be the favourite for the 2026 leaderboard title. As Mr Shane Keary put it after Killian’s latest win “ The league is yours if you want it” Athlone doesn’t hand out trophies easily. You earn them here and Killian has done exactly that.
Congratulations also goes to Ronan Gilligan and Colman Wheatly who were our Main Event Last Longers. They both won their package to the €100k for €100 Festival at the Greenisle Hotel on St Paddy’s weekend.
PLO – 8-Max (€2,160 Prize Pool)
The Saturday night PLO 8-Max pulled in 18 entries, creating a €2,160 prize pool and wrapping up after 4 hours and 18 minutes of controlled chaos.
The usual suspects were in attendance — Shane Keary, John Cormican, and Stephen “Stork” Bartley — but there would be no procession this time for Keary. Three-handed, he found himself short against Keith Touhey and Canadian Jimmy.
In the end, it was Jimmy who stood tallest, lifting the trophy and pocketing €1,100 after navigating the swings and the split pots.
Saturday NLH – €3,720 Prize Pool
The €170 2x Re-Entry Saturday NLH attracted 31 entries (24 unique), building a €3,720 prize pool and delivering a proper late-night scrap.
Nigel Cleary fell just shy of the podium places, collecting €560 for 4th after a deep and disciplined run.
From there, it became a tale of experience.
Old schooler Big Mick Graydon took command as the final table thinned, steering the action into a tense three-handed battle alongside Shella McSweeney and Jaunius Kavalciukas.
McSweeney had shown serious resilience throughout, but her run ended in 3rd place (€705) when Kavalciukas found the hand to send her to the rail.
That left a heads-up duel stretching into the early hours — chips sliding back and forth under the low hum of the room.
When the last card fell, it was Jaunius Kavalciukas who claimed the title and the €1,490 first prize, closing out another Saturday night in Athlone the only way this town knows how.
Hard fought. Well earned.
And never quiet for long.
See you all in Carrick poker fans!