ACR Hosts Second Venom Event in July with $10m GTD

The Venom is returning with a $10-million guaranteed prize pool this month, as Americas Cardroom continues to increase the amounts for its poker tournaments.

ACR Continues to Increase Venom’s Prize Pool 

Americas Cardroom (ACR) is back at it with a new Venom event. Despite the name, the actual happening behind it is one of the most noteworthy poker tournaments provided by a US-facing website. “The Venom,” as the poker pow-wow is known, is taking place this month, and it will have a $10-million guarantee, a substantial prize chunk to win. The last version of the event was hosted in January, and it had an $8 million guarantee, marking an upward trend for the company and the events hosted by ACR.

Since 2019, ACR has been hosting the Venom event, featuring a series of events and qualifiers. The prize pool back then was “only” $5 million in GTD prize cash, but still enough set a Guinness World Record. The satellites alone have ACR collect enough money to push the prize pool in past editions, and the second installment of The Venom in 2021 is no exception.

Players who wish to buy directly into the Main Event can still do so. The buy-in is worth $2,650, but, in the period leading up to July 23, when the first day of play will take place, there will be hundreds of qualifiers to partake in. The current schedule runs as follows:

• Day 1A – July 23 at 1 pm ET
• Day 1B – July 25 at 1 pm ET
• Day 1C – July 30 at 1 pm ET
• Day 1D – August 1 at 1 pm ET
• Day 2 – August 2 at 1 pm ET 
• Day 3 – August 3 at 1 pm ET 
• Day 4 – August 1 at 5 pm ET 

Some of these days are expected to last as long as 12 hours of intense play.

Taking the High Road and Establishing ACR’s Reputation 

ACR was briefly caught up in a bit of a controversy earlier this year when CEO Phil Nagy made some comments on a live stream that were described as sexist. Nagy, though, did not try to shrug off criticism but offered a sincere apology and said that he regretted his words, which appeased the community but also set ACR apart from other cardrooms that have arguably sided with the offenders in similar cases.

A similar controversy was stirred up by Dan Bilzerian when he joined as a GGPoker ambassador. GGPoker didn’t act much on the issue, stating that it could not control what its ambassadors did on social media and launched a series of initiatives targeting female audiences. 

ACR, on the other hand, has been able to maintain a good reputation for itself. The company even revealed that the bullish crypto run that started late last year and kept in the first quarter of 2021 has been driving players to bet massive amounts of Bitcoin at ACR.