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The satellite remains one of the most important yet underused tools the poker industry has to grow the game and to ensure operators get huge fields for their events.

Earlier this year, the Irish Open attracted over 5,000 players, despite directly clashing with the World Series of Poker Europe in Prague. One of the reasons for this incredible success is how many satellites they ran to the event.

More than 1,000 players qualified for the tournament, in no small part because satellites started incredibly early, across several networks.

Guarantee numbers early

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We are now more than six months away from next year's Irish Open, but once again, qualifiers have already started. The iPoker network has started daily qualifiers this week. These include feeders into big Sunday finals as well as seat-only qualifiers five times a week.

The expectation is that PokerStars will also start to offer Irish Open qualifiers, probably immediately after the World Championship of Online Poker. If so, it will be interesting to see what impact that will have on the numbers, given that PokerStars has now become a network. Later on this year, the Irish Open main partner, Paddy Power, will officially become a skin on the PokerStars network.

It seems that the way to go is hosting qualifiers early for bucket-list-type tournaments such as the Irish Open. GGPoker have adopted a similar strategy, and you can technically qualify for both WSOP Paradise and next year's World Series of Poker Main Event right now on the site via their WSOP Express packages.

The 2027 Irish Open takes place next year between March 18 and March 29