Russian poker player ‘badlucktou’ entered the final table of the $5 million guaranteed ACR Venom PKO with the clear chip lead, holding 164,504,419 of the chips in play. Canada native Jeff ‘jumping gn’ Reardon was second in chips, and the only other player at the table with over 100 million in chips -- with a stack of 103,564,690. When it was all said and done, ‘badlucktou’ made the most of his chip lead in a dominant final table performance that led to them winning the tournament’s $411,667.99 top prize and an extra $304,408.95 in bounties, for a total of $716,076.94.
After missing out on the first three bounties at the final table, ‘badlucktou’ scored each of the last four knockouts in the tournament. The first two knockouts came due to fortuitous rivers. His ten-nine rivered a nine against the pocket sixes of ‘SirRunALot’ to add $13,383.78 to his account and progressive bounty, and his queen-seven rivered a seven against the king-ten of ‘Miral777’ to pick up another $2,890.63 for himself and his bounty.
With play down to three-handed, ‘badlucktou’ made a standard min-raise from the button. Germany’s ‘YoAsakura’ called from the small blind and Jeff Reardon moved all-in for his last 12.82 big blinds. ‘badlucktou’ re-shoved his 73 big blind stack, and ‘YoAsakura’ made the call for 47.82 more big blinds in a wild three-way all-in pot.
When the cards were revealed, ‘badlucktou’ and Reardon both had the same hand with king-queen, and ‘YoAsakura’ was ahead of both with pocket jacks. An ace-seven-three flop kept ‘YoAsakura’ in the lead, but a king on the turn put ‘badlucktou’ and Reardon in front. Reardon stayed alive in the tournament, and secured a nice pay jump with his 20.95 portion of the side pot while ‘badlucktou’ added another $29,559.31 to his progressive bounty and account, along with his share of the side pot and all of the main pot for 92.96 big blinds.
The writing was on the wall with ‘badlucktou’ holding a nearly 10-to-1 chip lead over his opponent heading into heads-up play. Reardon battled for 20 minutes before eventually losing on a river bluff that might have worked had ‘badlucktou’ not rivered two-pair. The Canadian earned an excellent payday for his runner-up finish with $411,687 and an additional $100,417 in bounty winnings for a cool $512,104.
Chris Moneymaker had entered Day 3 with a big stack, but couldn’t get anything going on the tournament’s penultimate day. He was eventually eliminated in 32nd place, and settled for an $8,700 cash and $10,000 in bounties. Moneymaker joined Michael Loncar and Justin Kelly for live coverage of the final table Wednesday on ACR’s Twitch channel.
All told, it was another successful Venom PKO event for Americas Cardroom, which beat its $5 million guaranteed prize pool with 2,321 entries for a total of $5,802,500. The top six players in this event all cleared over $120,000. And thanks to Phil Nagy’s staking promotion, thousands of dollars were raised for breast cancer awareness.
Final Table Payouts
1. ‘badlucktou’: $411,687 + $304,408
2. Jeff ‘jumping gn’ Reardon: $411,687 + $100,417
3. ‘YoAsakura’: $262,273 + $57,868
4. ‘Miral777’: $189,161 + $4,531
5. ‘SirRunALot’: $136,358 + $25,517
6. ‘lampio23’: $103,574 + $18,750
7. ‘Stackedbrightfutur’: $72,531 + $16,542
8. ‘wizazo’: $50,771 + $40,502
Featured Image Credit: Twitter - ACR