Europe’s longest-running poker tournament series, the Irish Poker Open (IPO), had a busy schedule this year from April 15-22 at Citywest Hotel in Dublin. IPO is also celebrated as the second-longest series in the world after the World Series of Poker (WSOP).
This year, the €1,150 NLHE Main Event that featured a €1 Million guaranteed prize pool stole the show. Weijie Zheng was declared the winner, and he walked away with €300,000 ($337,797) in prize money.
The Main Event started on April 17 and four starting flights later, it saw a field of 1,807 entries generating a prize pool of €1,805,870. This was an impressive 34% increase from the previous year’s Main Event.
Zheng had a remarkable run last year as well where he was able to finish at the 69th spot. However, this year, he broke all records, entering the nine-handed final table with a massive stack of 16,970,000 chips.
Final Table Recap
The final table started with nine players and the first one to go was Steven Alper. Zheng removed him in the ninth place. Seamus Cahill followed him in eighth place. Zheng again took charge and removed Max Silver in seventh place.
David Crilly was the next one to exit in sixth place, and Sami Agel followed him in fifth place. Thomas Gallagher took charge and removed Sami Agel and then Raymond Wheatley in fourth place. However, couldn’t keep up the momentum and had to leave the table in third place.
Finally, it came down to Weijie Zheng and Dave Masters for the heads-up round. Dave fought bravely but eventually gave up, paving the way for Zheng to win the title.
The Final Payouts
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