Two parallel tournaments will once again run side by side in ACR Poker’s annual flagship Venom event, with starting flights kicking off from April 13.
No-limit hold’em (NLH) and pot-limit Omaha (PLO) players are both catered to with a choice of big money, big field tournaments taking place concurrently.
The NLH version is likely to attract a far larger field, given the wider popularity of the format, and so comes with the higher $10M guaranteed prize pool, with first place likely to pay out around $1M; the PLO version carries a $2M guarantee and an estimated $400K up top.
1,000+ seats guaranteed in satellites
The direct buy-in for each tournament is $2,650, but cheaper routes to entry are available including MEGA Satellite paths starting with freerolls. ACR Poker has committed to over 1,000 entries available via satellites, including the following for the NLH event:
- 445 seats in daily direct satellites from $33
- 372 seats via MEGA Satellites, running at weekends with buy-ins of $55, $109, $290 and $630
- 120 seats via Beast Satellites, running March 30 to April 20
- 20 seats guaranteed in Venom Madness Satellites
Cheap qualification for the PLO event is also available, with 48 seats guaranteed in daily direct satellites and at least 30 entries in each of three MEGA Satellites, running on Sundays from April 13.
MEGA Satellite entries can be achieved for free, with regular freerolls awarding Super Satellite tickets worth $5.50 (to qualify for $55 MEGA Satellites), $11 (for $109 MEGA Satellites), $33 (for $290) and $66 (for $630).
More info on satellites can be found at ACR Poker.
Both the NLH and PLO events will offer five starting flights, all commencing at 1:05pm ET:
- Sunday, April 13
- Thursday, April 17
- Sunday, April 20
- Thursday, April 24
- Sunday, April 27
Day 2s for each will run on Monday, April 28, when the PLO event is expected to conclude. The NLH event will run a Day 3 on Tuesday, April 28 and end with the final table on Wednesday, April 30.
The PLO event will also be a multi-entry tourney, allowing play on multiple Day 1s to build a bigger stack.
‘The biggest win of my life by far’
Last spring’s NLH Venom was the biggest to date, attracting 5,045 entries, and was won by WSOP bracelet winner Dominik Nitsche for over $1.8M — an amount he called “the biggest win of my life by far.”
Each of the top three finishers in last spring’s NLH Venom banked more than a million dollars, while ACR Poker pro Chris Moneymaker won over $382K for a deep run which ended in 6th place.
Nitsche would go on to make more headlines in 2024, though for very different reasons, for his role at the heart of the WSOP Main Event controversy over the use of laptops on the rail.
ACR Poker’s latest flagship tournament is announced just a month after the site released its revamped tournament schedule, with the site also recently in the news after several of its sponsored pros — Nacho Barbero and Ebony Kenney — were revealed to have used the GTO Wizard solver during online play. Neither player was proved to have used the software to aid decision-making during real-time hands they played.
Additional image courtesy of Neil Stoddart.
