Jarrod Thatcher Wins the Irish Open Sydney Main Event to Become the First Champion of an Irish Open Outside Ireland

Jarrod Thatcher walked into Poker Palace in Bossley Park, Sydney, on Monday as an underdog at his own final table and walked out as the first Irish Open champion ever crowned outside Ireland. The Australian spiked a set to survive an early elimination and defeated fellow Australian Joseph Antar heads-up on September 14 to close out the Irish Open Sydney Main Event. The A$2,000 buy-in drew 515 entries for a guaranteed A$1,000,000 prize pool. The final five players agreed an ICM deal that left A$30,000 and the trophy on the table. Thatcher took both.

• Read more: Irish Open Makes Historic Sydney Debut as Full 2026 Schedule Lands
• Read more: Roderick Watson Claims Sviten Special Title at the 2026 Irish Open Sydney
• Read more: Local Hero Simon Wilson Wins Record-Breaking 2025 Irish Open Main Event

The Hand That Changed Everything

Jacob Alha of Australia started the nine-handed final table as chip leader. Thatcher did not. When the two met in an early confrontation, Thatcher was all-in and behind: 8♠8♦ against Alha’s J♠J♥. An eight on the turn kept Thatcher alive.

From there, Thatcher played the final table as though it owed him something. Shortly after surviving, he picked off an all-in bluff from Alha and took the rest of his stack. The chip leader at the start of the day was gone, and Thatcher moved to the front of the counts. This is not unfamiliar territory for him. At the 2017 WSOP Circuit Sydney Turbo Event at Star Poker, in this same city, nine years ago, Thatcher entered the final table as the overwhelming chip leader with 653,000 and eliminated seven of the eight remaining players himself before taking the title. Different final table, same outcome.

The Deal and the Trophy

When five players remained, the table agreed an ICM deal. The numbers were settled, but A$30,000 was set aside and the trophy was left on the table. Poker’s version of extra time. Thatcher, Antar, and Cunningham played the final three stages, with Jarod Cunningham going out in third before an all-Australian heads-up match for the title.

Joseph Antar had A$101,900 locked up from the deal. Jarrod Thatcher had A$125,100. The A$30,000 and the right to call himself Irish Open champion were still on the table. Thatcher navigated the heads-up without a stumble and collected the trophy along with his final prize of A$155,100 in total.

Irish Open Sydney Main Event Final Table Results

A$2,000 buy-in | 515 entries | A$1,000,000 guaranteed prize pool

Place	Player	Prize
1st	Jarrod Thatcher	A$155,100*
2nd	Joseph Antar	A$101,900*
3rd	Jarod Cunningham	A$77,000*
4th	Martin Finger	A$98,500*
5th	Jiajun Yang	A$98,000*
6th	Shengfeng Ma	A$37,500
7th	Xiangxi Zheng	A$28,500
8th	Aaron George	A$21,400
9th	Jacob Alha	A$16,900

*Five-way ICM deal at the final table. A$30,000 and the trophy left to play for.

What This Result Means

The Irish Open has been running since 1980 and has produced champions from across Europe and beyond, but every Main Event winner in its 46-year history has held the trophy in Dublin. Thatcher is the first to win it anywhere else. Seven of the nine finalists were Australian, and the result delivered exactly the kind of local-hero story a debut international festival needs to establish itself.

This is also not the first time Thatcher has made history. In 2022, he became the first Australian ever to win a Grosvenor UK Poker Tour Main Event, taking down the GUKPT London Main Event from a field of 390 players for £87,530; then, he made history on foreign soil. Now he has done it at home. He has been winning on the Australian circuit since 2017, when he took down the WSOP Circuit Sydney Turbo Event at Star Poker and the Melbourne Poker Championships Main Event in the same year. His total live earnings now sit well north of $1.5 million across 171 recorded cashes per The Hendon Mob, with the Irish Open Sydney result not yet added.

The Irish Open’s first trip outside Ireland produced an experienced Australian champion at a casino in suburban Sydney on the strength of a spiked set and a bluff-catch, written by a player with a career-long habit of winning tournaments that nobody had won before.

• Sources: Irish Open, SpadePoker, The Hendon Mob. Photos: Irish Open.
• Article originally produced at poker.pro.