America's Cardoom (ACR) has announced that its popular "Venom" PKO tournament will return in September with a $5 million guarantee. This is the third iteration of the progressive knockout tourney for ACR, and it's scheduled to run September 17-29, 2021.
As with ACR's two earlier Venom PKO events, September's tournament will feature multiple opening-day flights. ACR bills this $2,650-entry event as the largest PKO tournament in all of online poker. Many of the tournament's players, however, will come from large numbers of Skips and Venom Blitz satellites instead of buying in directly.
ACR will also offer hundreds of seats to the Venom PKO through a series of "Venom Fever" qualifying tourneys. Those qualifiers begin on September 3.
Strong showing for earlier Venom PKO events
The Venom PKO's first two appearances were quite successful, indicating that this third effort should have little trouble exceeding its $5 million guarantee. The event's debut in November 2020 saw "Pinguinachica" emerge from a 2,711-entry for the win. Pinguinachica earned $477,815 for the win and collected another $273,253 in bounties, for a total payday of $751,068.
The Venom PKO returned in May 2021. This time, 2,864 entries combined to push the prize pool to $7,160,000. "Rydo" earned a combined $738,134 in winning the title. That total consisted of a $501,916 payout, plus $236,218 in accumulated bounties.
PKO format enjoys popularity surge
The progressive-knockout format has attracted player participation both online and live over the past two years. Perhaps no site has marketed PKO as heavily as Americas Cardroom. ACR has for many years served as the flagship site of the US-friendly Winning Poker Network.
In a PKO event, half of each buy-in is reserved for a bounty placed on the head of every participating player. When one player knocks out another, he receives half of that other player's bounty as an immediate cash payment. The other half of the knocked-out player's bounty is added to the winning player's existing bounty.
The format makes the available bounties grow over time as the field narrows. More players receive some form of payout in a PKO tourney than in a standard-format event, meaning the average payout is lower. However, the dynamic manner in which PKO bounties accumulate means large bounties are distributed throughout the event, and the final players in any PKO typically amass hefty and accumulated knockout bonuses.
Featured image source: americascardroom.eu
