The latest iteration of the Venom tournament is done and in the books. And a player from Austria named BoBomb14 won $1.18M for finishing in first place.
The prize pool for the Venom was $10M, as promised by the Winning Poker Network. But it didn’t get to that number by way of entries in the tournament, as they had hoped. The number of entries fell short of the necessary number to hit $10M. It was short enough that the network had to put $545K into the prize pool to keep its promise.
In and of itself, that wouldn’t have been the worst thing to happen in online poker history. What makes it a little harder to take is that this overlay was even more than the last one. The last regular Venom tournament in the summer of 2021 slapped that $10M guarantee on it, and the final participation just missed it. Americas Cardroom and its sister sites had to put in $175K to make it to $10M. This much larger overlay in the first Venom of 2022 may force the network to reduce its hopes for the tournament in the near future.
The ACR blog post that mentioned the total for this Venom called the network’s contribution a “value-driven overlay for our players.” That, poker players, is a positive spin.
Let’s see how it all went down.
Trying to Hit the Mark
Americas Cardroom and its sister sites on the Winning Poker Network promoted the Venom for quite a while. They set up four starting flights – two Fridays and two Sundays toward the end of January. After the first two underwhelmed and indicated the possibility of another overlay, the network quickly added one more flight. They added Day 1E on the final weekend. It did work to boost the numbers overall, though it wasn’t enough.
ACR Venom 2022
(Jan-Feb)
$2,650 buy-in ($10M GTD)
Day 1A
455
(535 in previous Venom)
Day 1B
895
(1,026 in previous Venom)
Day 1C
589
(771 in previous Venom)
Day 1D
1492
(1,598 in previous Venom)
Day 1E
351
(no equivalent in previous Venom)
Total entries:
3782
(3,930 in previous Venom)
Total prize pool:
$10,000,000
($9,455,000 + $545,000 overlay)
With the prize pool at $10M, it broke down to pay the top 591 finishers a minimum of $4K.
When all Day 1 survivors met again, it was Day 2. It started with 642 players and ended with just 62. Day 3 then whittled the field down to just eight for the final table.
Playing for a Million
With the top payout set at $1.18M, the final table was bound to be a fight to the finish. Americas Cardroom livestreamed it on Twitch with commentary by Michael Loncar, Justin Kelly, and Chris Moorman. They delayed it 30 minutes so they could show the players’ hole cards.
At the start, the payouts listed differed from the ones on the tournament’s payout chart. The winner had been slated to become a millionaire with a $1.18M win. However, as is normal in a major tournament of this caliber, the pay jumps were fairly significant. All of the players decided that they would rather the payouts reflect a 50% ICM (independent chip model) split. That means the payouts would reflect the chip counts of the players at the start of the final table. The numbers explain it better:
The positive of the deal was to decrease those significant jumps. The negative, of course, was the inability for ACR and the network to say that the tournament created a millionaire.
On to the action…
Kylejf used A-K and a short stack to look for the double-up about 20 minutes into play. BoBomb14 called with pocket aces, though, and that was enough to send Kylejf out in eighth place.
https://twitter.com/ACR_POKER/status/1489025027139854338?s=20&t=J5bD6atMjqsSt_ZQusfqeg
Eight players remained at the one-hour mark, despite three (sometimes four) players holding fewer than 20 big blinds each. ImHereToFold was one of the shortest but doubled through SeT4x4 to climb out of extreme danger. Galaxycygnus also chipped up. When livinmydream pushed with pocket eights, ImHereToFold called with kings to oust livinmydream in seventh place.
After galaxycygnus took a sizeable pot from ImHereToFold and continued chipping up. ImHereToFold then lost half of their chips to BoBomb14. A few hands later, ImHereToFold shoved from the small blind with Q-T suited, and Padishar called from the big blind with A-3. The board delivered a queen on the flop but an ace on the turn to oust ImHereToFold in sixth place.
100kunderrisk took a good amount of chips from galaxycygnus, and BoBomb14 did the same from Padishar. After Padishar lost more down to around seven big blinds, that player then doubled through galaxycygnus. That prompted galaxycygnus to shove with 9-8 on a T-9-6 flop, and BoBomb14 called with Q-J. But a jack on the turn ousted galaxycygnus in fifth place.
Soon after, Padishar put the last 13 big blinds at risk with A-2, but BoBomb14’s pocket jacks held up to the board to bust Padishar in fourth place.
SeT4x4 was the shortest stack by far three-handed. With A-T, that player shoved but found that BoBomb14 had A-J. SeT4x4 busted in third place.
https://twitter.com/ACR_POKER/status/1489045226597588992?s=20&t=J5bD6atMjqsSt_ZQusfqeg
BoBomb14 took nearly 116 big blinds into heads-up play to the 73 big blinds of 100kunderrisk. The latter came close to evening the chip stacks by the three-hour tournament break. And in a big hand worth more than 200K chips, 100kunderrisk took the lead. A bit later, a big hand developed. 100kunderrisk bet big holding 8-9 on a 3-2-8-4 board, but BoBomb14 had K-7 of diamonds with two diamonds on the table. A moment after BoBomb14 called, the 5 of diamonds hit on the river. 101kunderrisk pushed all-in, and BoBomb14 snap-called for the double-up.
That left 100kunderrisk with about 20 big blinds, but a few solid pots kept the game going. It didn’t take long for 100kunderrisk to move all-in, though. That happened with pocket sixes against the 7-6 of hearts belonging to BoBomb14. The board delivered A-A-J-J-J for a split pot. Then, the two got involved on a 2-6-3 flop containing two diamonds. BoBomb14 had A-9 of diamonds, and 100kunderrisk had 6-9. The latter shoved after a K on the turn, and the J of diamonds on the river gave the win to BoBomb14.
https://twitter.com/ACR_POKER/status/1489061084405325828?s=20&t=J5bD6atMjqsSt_ZQusfqeg
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