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American "RyDo" wins record-breaking The Venom PKO $5M
On May 12, 2021, the second edition of The Venom PKO $5M GTD came to an end. It collected a record $7,160,000 prize pool and became the largest bounty tournament in online poker history. The US grinder "RyDo" won it by $737,134.
New Winning Poker Network (WPN) world record
The US-friendly network Winning Poker (WPN) decided to repeat its 2020 PKO experiment this spring. The guarantee of the new series in this format was slashed by half (PKO Online Super Series $25M GTD), and so far, there have been large overlays in only two events.
But the second Venom with progressive knockouts was again played with a five million dollars guarantee. The players wondered: can this tournament break the record set last year? The number of registrations by starting day was distributed as follows:
- Day 1A — 321
- Day 1B — 796
- Day 1C — 573
- Day 1D — 1,174
The Venom PKO $5M GTD collected 2,864 entries and a prize pool of $7,160,000, making it the largest tournament in this format in online poker history.
The previous record was broken by $382,500.
3bb is not a sentence
There was a significant presence of Americans at the final table. As in previous editions, there were also representatives from Austria and Brazil. Still, the chip leader was the Spanish regular Ignacio "TIKITAKA11" Morón Chavero.
He was able to take full advantage of the pressure on his opponents. With 6 players left, Ignacio had twice as many chips in the stack as all his rivals combined. The Spaniard ran over the Aces of Nippler (Austria) and stopped the American "The_Founder" in 4th place, who survived for more than an hour at the table with an ultrashort stack.
The opponent of "TIKITAKA11" in the final heads-up reached the TOP5 with only 3bb and doubled twice in a row at expenses on the chip leader: JK-35, TT-QQ (epically catching a ten in the river).
It seemed that the battle with the almost 5-fold advantage of the Spaniard would end very quickly. But it went on for half an hour, and what happened during that time is well illustrated by the expression on Chris Moneymaker's face on the live broadcast:
The tournament's final hand was KQ vs. 88; the American flopped the King, and a straight in the river defined the tournament.
The winner of The Venom PKO $5M GTD was the US player "RyDo" — he earned $737,134 (including a $236,218 bounty).
Who is RyDo?
We could not find out the real name of this player. Sharkscope says RyDo has been playing on the Winning Poker Network for just over a year with an average buy-in of $150 and managed to play 2,961 MTTs in that time. His biggest cash of $33,886 was on October 3 in a $1,050 BOSS series event.
However, the grinder could not show any positive win rate during all this time, and before The Venom, his minus was more than $30k.
What's next?
Considering the previous schedule of The Venom, then in the summer, players should expect this event in a classic format, and in the fall, another PKO event. Of course, the most exciting thing: will the network finally decide to raise the guarantee of both events to $10,000,000 and $7,000,000, respectively?
The large satellite grid for both events is already successful. And nothing prevents WPN from simply launching them not a month but two before starting the event and adding 1-2 more starting days to its schedule.
The Venom has become the most successful new brand of the Winning Poker Network. The growth of its prize pool will significantly help boost its popularity among players. Most likely, we will find out the network's plans in late June or early July.
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