The Irish Poker Tour’s first event of 2025 is over. The Galway Poker Festival has crowned 18 champions, including one in the massive €700 buy-in Main Event. Over 3,000 players descended on The Galmont Hotel in Galway between January 1-6, helping to smash every guarantee the Irish Poker Tour placed on its tournaments.
Some 694 players bought into the €700 Galway Poker Festival Main Event, resulting in a €418,570 prize pool. The top 70 finishers received a slice of the pie, with in-the-money players including Cathal Shine, Paddy Power Poker’s Conor O’Driscoll, Sean Prendiville, Ian Gascoigne, Jason Tompkins, and Padraig O’Neill.
2025 Galway Poker Festival Main Event Final Table Results
| Rank | Player | Prize |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Mitchell Hynam | €83,600 |
| 2 | Daryl McAleenan | €60,000 |
| 3 | Derek Baker | €35,000 |
| 4 | Mark Buckley | €25,000 |
| 5 | Mary Galvin | €19,000 |
| 6 | Niall McAree | €16,500 |
| 7 | Jacque Ramsden | €14,500 |
| 8 | Conor O’Rourke | €13,000 |
| 9 | Michael Dwyer | €11,570 |
Michael Dwyer, fresh from cashing in the $25,000 WSOP Paradise Main Event for $67,300, fell in ninth place. The first player busted from the Galway Poker Festival Main Event saw his lifetime earnings boosted by €11,570.
Conor O’Rourke continued his good form in Ireland-based tournaments by finishing eighth for €13,000. Last October, he was the third-place finisher in the €3,000 Irish Poker Festival Main Event, earning him a career-best €70,000.
Seventh place and €14,500 went to Jacque Ramsden, who predominately plays live events in Asia and Australia. Ramsden’s latest cash takes his recorded earnings past the $450,000 mark.
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Irish Poker Tour regular Niall McAree turned his €700 investment into a €16,500 score after falling in sixth. The popular Irishman is best known for his runner-up finish at the 2023 Irish Poker Tour Killarney Main Event, where he took home €63,000 after a heads-up deal with Jamie Flynn.
The Galway Poker Festival Main Event could have had a female champion for the first time, but it wasn’t meant to be. Mary Galvin’s impressive run ended in fifth place, a finish worth €19,000. That princely sum more than doubled Galvin’s recorded live tournament cashes, and eclipsed her previous best of €3,850, her reward for winning a €150 No-Limit Hold’em event at the 2023 Galway Winter Festival.
The final four pay-jumps were quite severe, especially considering the buy-in was €700. Nobody would have been surprised had a deal been struck, but there was no such talk, and the final quartet played out the Main Event as intended.
A lack of deal meant Mark Buckley collected €25,000 after coming unstuck in fourth place. You may recall Buckley won the €3,000 Irish Poker Festival Main Event (the one O’Rourke finished third in) for €177,000. Buckley is now rapidly approaching $1 million in live cashes.
This event’s reigning champion, Derek Baker, almost did the unthinkable and went back-to-back. Baker won €83,500 in 2024 but had to make do with the €35,000 third-place prize in 2025. It was a phenomenal performance that is sure to result in the baker returning to Galway in 12 months’ time to try to complete a remarkable hat-trick.
Baker’s untimely demise left Daryl McAleenan heads-up against Mitchell Hynam. Lady Luck played a vital role in the one-on-one battle, gifting Hynam the nut straight when McAleenan held the second nuts, but don’t let that detract from Hynam’s superb performance and well-deserved victory. Hynam took home a career-high prize worth €83,600, leaving McAleenan to collect the €60,000 consolation prize.
Hynam only has cashes dating back to September 2019 and usually plays low-stakes events, yet he has amassed over $600,000 in winnings. Remember the name!
2025 Galway Poker Festival Results
The expandable table below shows the results of all 18 Irish Poker Tour Galway Poker Festival results, in order of first-place prizes. Of course, Hynam sits proudly at the top of the tree, but congratulations also go to the €400 Paddy Power Poker Mystery Bounty champion Paul Lynam, who scooped €23,750.
Liam Chevalier helped himself to the €20,000 top prize in the €1,100 High Roller, with David Cleary winning €17,000 and the €300 Claddagh Poker Cup trophy. Other five-figure prizes went to Mark Finnane (€11,800) in the €650 Galway Omaha Championship and to Alexander Bernstein (€10,650), winner of the €300 Galway Poker Cup.
*includes mystery bounty payments of €12,750
Next Up On The Irish Poker Tour
Players don’t have long until the next Irish Poker Tour event takes place because the Limerick €30K In A Day is scheduled for January 11. From there, the tour heads to Charleville for the Munster Poker Festival from January 24-26. The festival includes a €200 Main Event with a €70,000 guarantee on its prize pool.
As always, online satellites are available at the Irish Poker Tour’s partner, Paddy Power Poker.
Senior Editor
