The Winning Poker Network, especially its flagship site Americas Cardroom, takes great pride in its signature Venom tournament. For years, ACR and its sister poker sites have been running the Venom tournament, complete with masses of satellites and huge guarantees.
The last several iterations of Venom (the regular No Limit Hold’em format, not the PKO) have each offered a $10M guarantee on the prize pool.
Whether they hit the guarantee or pay an overlay, Venom remains popular and well-attended.
The one that just ended on February 8 ended up with a sizeable overlay, but WPN kept its promise and filled the prize pool to make it the promised amount of $10M. And in the end, an Estonian player took down the title and $1.2M.
Overlay for the Players
This iteration of the Venom offered the standard $2,500 + $150 buy-in, unlimited reentries, and $10M prize pool guarantee. There were five starting flights: January 26 and 29; and February 2, 4, and 5.
When the computer tallied the entries, they were not nearly enough to cover the guarantee, prompting WPN to put in $885K as an overlay. With that, the prize pool did sit at $10M. It’s interesting to look at the entries per flight and the totals, especially as compared to the last two Venom tournaments, both in 2022.
ACR Venom 2023 (Jan-Feb)
$2,650 buy-in / $10M GTD
(Jul-Aug 2022)
(Feb 2022)
Day 1A
456
459
455
Day 1B
832
1035
895
Day 1C
515
656
589
Day 1D
486
1511
1492
Day 1E
1357
356
351
Total entries
3646
4017
3782
Prize pool generated
$9,115,000
$10,042,500
$9,455,000
Overlay?
$885,000
$0
$545,000
Prize pool paid
$10,000,000
$10,042,500
$10,000,000
Of the starting field, the top 559 finishers received payouts. That bubble burst on Day 2, which had started with 646 players. It worked its way into the money and payouts escalated until the end of that night, when just 82 players remained.
Day 3 reduced that field from 82 to eight final table competitors. They stacked up this way:
On Wednesday, February 8, those eight players took to a single table on the ACR Twitch livestream to play to a winner.
And on the very first hand, a preflop raising war led to RacaNegra shoving with T-9 suited against the A-K of chipleader Time2ReaP. The latter found an ace and king on the board to send the first player out quickly.
https://twitter.com/ACR_POKER/status/1623467272508436482?s=20&t=UUqwwni7MUhGQVQ_qLLJ3A
Just a couple hands later, Imo busted Avangard977, and play slowed down a bit. Eventually, it was gayx2x who eliminated Spowi07 just before the one-hour break in a battle of the short stacks. Imo soon jumped into the chip lead with BochkarevRU close behind, as Time2ReaP lost ground to become one of the shorter stacks. BochkarevRU then busted gayx2x with pocket queens over A-K to take over the lead.
BochkarevRU took charge and put the other survivors on some decisions. The next big one, just before the two-hour mark, BochkarevRU had T-8 and Time2ReaP had Q-9 suited. The latter had a flush draw on the flop, but BochkarevRU picked up a pair on the turn and two pair on the river. That sent Time2ReaP out in fourth place.
https://twitter.com/ACR_POKER/status/1623475900254720010?s=20&t=UUqwwni7MUhGQVQ_qLLJ3A
One more break led to three players returning and BochkarevRU the far-and-away chip leader. The next few rounds saw that player chip away at Ph_Almighty, leaving the latter with fewer than 30 big blinds. Imo dropped to that same level as well. And it was the short stacks who eventually battled. Ph_almighty shoved with A-8 against the pocket jacks of Imo, and the jacks held up.
BochkarevRU had a massive chip lead going into heads-up, with Imo holding only about 30 big blinds. Imo couldn’t get anything going, though, and shoved with A-4 against the A-6 of diamonds of BochkarevRU. The board delivered three diamonds to eliminate Imo and give the Estonian the win.
https://twitter.com/ACR_POKER/status/1623481857458204675?s=20&t=UUqwwni7MUhGQVQ_qLLJ3A
The final payouts were:
