The International Poker Open (IPO) takes place this October at the Bonnington Hotel Dublin, with WPT Global as the new headline sponsor. The partnership deal will be in place for three years and will see WPT Global run satellites and qualifiers around the clock to the live event.
The IPO is one of Europe’s longest-running poker tours, which is renowned as an event that attracts huge fields thanks to its spread of low stakes events. The much-loved live series returns to the Bonnington Hotel, Dublin October 21 to 27, 2025.
It features a full schedule including three new tournaments: a two-day Seniors Event, a 8-Game tournament, and an Omaha tournament. The Main Event returns where it is expected to draw over a thousand entrants. There will be six Day 1 flights played out live, plus an online Day 1 that is hosted on WPT Global on August 31. High Roller and Super High Roller tournaments are also scheduled along with Mini Main and Deep stacks events.
Buy-ins start at €10 and go up to €1,100 at the top end.
“The concept has always been to provide the Irish poker community with a small buy-in, big field, well-structured event, bridging the gap between pub poker/casino nightly games and the mid-stakes poker circuit,” WPT Global Ambassador David Lappin said via his article on the topic.
As well as sponsoring the event, 20 promotional Golden Passes will be given away in the run up the live event via WPT Global satellites to lucky players. The pass not only covers the IPO Main Event buy-in, it awards the player an additional €100,000 if they go on to win the event. This lucrative €100,000 carrot-dangling made headlines this year during the WSOP as the poker community criticized the incentive, that was offered by ClubWPT Gold, the sweepstakes poker arm of WPT Global.
To briefly recap, ClubWPT Gold ran a promotion where if a Gold Pass winner went on to win the Millionaire Maker WSOP event, that player would get an additional $1 million in prize money from the sweepstakes site. And that is exactly that happened. Jesse Yaginuma got his seat in the WSOP tournament via the ClubWPT Gold “Gold Pass” promotion. What made headlines was the fact that Yaginuma and his opponent were accused of collusion and chip dumping in their heads-up match in order for Yaginuma to win.
But ClubWPT Gold honored their promotion and paid out the million dollars despite the WSOP opting not to award Yaginuma a WSOP bracelet after investigating the allegations. But like water off a ducks back, WPT Global is running the same promotion for the IPO, albeit for less.
Sponsorship Shakeup
The IPO which has been running since 2007 and was sponsored by Unibet between 2017 to 2023 and by PokerStars and Paddy Power for the 2024 outing. Notably PokerStars and Paddy Power (both Flutter brands) have cosponsored the Irish Poker Open for the past two years, but were not lucky enough to secure the International Poker Open sponsorship for another year.
Previous sponsors of the IPO also include Boyle Poker, Full Tilt, Grosvenor Poker, GGPoker. Now WPT Global will take centre stage.
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Recently, WPT Global signed Jose Ignacio “Nacho” Barbero up as an Ambassador to the site, along with sponsoring the Chip Race Podcast and its co-hosts Dara O’Kearney and David Lappin. It also secured the headline sponsorship rights to The Battle of Malta, another much loved live poker festival that attracts big crowds.
WPT Global will be giving away $1,280 Battle of Malta packages through weekly step satellites each week from now until the start of the series, which takes place October 28 to November 5. The outing for the Battle of Malta also marks its ten-year anniversary on the live poker sene.
$2 Million up for Grabs in the WPT Global Crazy Freeroll Series
Not only is WPT Global busy sponsoring players and live events, the growing online poker brand is also in the middle of a massive giveaway, where $2 million is up for grabs via a variety of freerollls. Running August 18 through to October 5, the Crazy Freeroll Series, really is just that.
There are daily tournaments with $10,000 up for grabs and special Sunday events where players can hope for a share of the $100,000 in cash prizes.
- Daily Crazy Freerolls offer $10,000 in prizes and $2,000 extra for the winner.
- Super Crazy Freerolls happen each Sunday: there is a $100,000 prize pool and an additional $20,000 for the winner.
- All WPT Global players get four tickets to Daily Crazy Freerolls every week that get dropped automatically into player accounts.
The International Poker Open runs October 21 to 27, 2025.
