The Irish Open is leaving Ireland for the first time in its history, and it has chosen Sydney to open the next chapter. Organisers have locked in a 15-day festival running from August 31 to September 14 at Poker Palace, headlined by an A$2,000 Main Event carrying an A$1,000,000 guarantee. It is the brand’s first stop outside Dublin, where the festival has been rooted since 1980.
This is no token flag-planting exercise. The debut Australian edition spans more than 40 events with close to A$2,000,000 in combined guarantees, a spread that treats Sydney as a genuine flagship rather than a one-off experiment. Poker Palace co-owner Lauren Mooney, who grew up in Ireland before settling in Australia, called bringing the event to her second home “incredibly special.”
A card built for every bankroll
Buy-ins climb from the A$200 Ladies Championship all the way to a A$10,000 Super High Roller, with A$5,000 and A$3,000 high rollers filling the middle. The festival opens on August 31 with the A$360 Mini Irish Open, which spins through eleven starting flights and an A$500,000 guarantee before its finale on September 11. Around it sit the A$880 Lucky 8’s (A$250,000 guaranteed), the Hendon Mob Championship, a Mixed 8-Game Championship, a Sviten Special, PLO variants, and the locally flavoured Sydney Poker Open (A$880, A$100,000 guaranteed).
An easy sell for Asian grinders
The geography does real work here. Sydney sits within a short flight of the region’s busiest poker markets, and a September 9 event pointedly named the Asia-Pacific Cup makes the target audience explicit. For players across Korea, Japan, Thailand and the Philippines already accustomed to hopping to Jeju, Manila and Taipei, a well-guaranteed festival in an English-speaking hub with straightforward visa access lands as a natural addition to the calendar. Greater Sydney’s sizeable Irish-Australian community only sharpens the pitch.
Inside the Main Event
The A$2,000 centrepiece is spread across six Day 1 flights, some of them turbos, beginning with Day 1A on September 6 and closing with a Day 1F turbo on September 12. Survivors bag up for Day 2 on September 13 before the final day plays out on September 14. It is a format that gives the week a clear anchor while leaving plenty of oxygen for side-event action — a smart balance for a first-time international stop that wants to keep the Irish Open’s identity intact in a new market.
Everything now hinges on turnout. Clear the A$1,000,000 Main Event guarantee and this first overseas roll looks like the opening move in a longer international run; fall short and the maths for stop number two gets harder. Either way, from August 31 the oldest festival in European poker will be dealing cards on the far side of the planet, and Sydney gets to write the first hand.