Dublin Winter Festival Off to a Flying Start

Chris Commons Wins The Mystery Bounty

The Dublin Winter Festival, hosted by the Irish Poker Tour and sponsored by Paddy Power Poker, had a very busy opening day at the Green Isle Hotel.

The main attraction of the day, the Paddy Power Mystery Bounty had over 50 entries by the end of the first level at the unpoker-like time of 1.30pm on a working Friday. Eventually 163 entries built a prizepool of €34,605 with Chris Commons taking the trophy after a heads up battle with Keith Touhey.

Chris pocketed €5,000 for the win plus €3,350 in bounties whilst Keith was delighted with €3,125 for second and €4,430 in bounties. Thomas Gallagher garnered €2,850 in third but unfortunately he lacked the magic touch with the Mystery Box and only gained €800 in bounties.

The Friday Night NLH had an original €5,000 guarantee but 113 entries produced a bumper €13,630 pot and it was Mark Doyle that took €3,000 and the trophy after a three way deal with Sheamus O’Reilly (€2,750) and Dutch visitor Melvin Siau (€2,330)

Day 1A of the €100,000 Main Event also had a great buzz with 124 entrants. 22 players survived to reach Sunday’s Final with Frenchman Giovanni Cotti top scorer on 492,000. Karl Griffin (420k), Florin Mihnea (410K), and John Burke (381k) are all well stacked going forward.

As always at the Green Isle there was a festive atmosphere and somewhat raucous banter amongst the players but agreat time was had by all with much more of the same promised for the rest of the weekend.