Winning Poker did it again! The Venom breaks the $6M mark

Round one: The Venom $5M

The first edition of The Venom was played five months ago and draw a massive field of 2,553 players that turned the initial guaranteed prize pool of $5M into $6,3M, setting a new record for the US poker industry. This event also received a Guinness World Record for the payment in cryptocurrency to the winner, Rafael "TheBigKid" Moraes from Brazil.

Right after paying the tournament winners, Phil Nagy announced a new event to be played after Thanksgiving, this time with a bigger guaranteed prize pool: The Venom $6M.

Round two: The Venom $6M

The second edition of The Venom ended today and awarded over $1M to the tournament winner. The event had a similar structure than the first Venom: four starting flights (one more) and $2,500 + $150 buy-in, and the guaranteed prize pool was 20% higher: $6M in total.

Despite having an additional day of action, the tournament attracted almost the same number of players, 2,662 vs. 2,553, 5% more:

• Day 1A (Wednesday, November 27): 462 players
• Day 1B (Sunday, December 01): 756 players
• Day 1C (Wednesday, December 04): 437 players
• Day 1D (Sunday, December 08): 1,041 players

The final table was played on December 11 and was composed by:

• "gillobono", 259,032,822, United Kingdom;
• João "galodoido13" Simão, 156,638,026, Brazil;
• "Saranga", 112,512,714, Argentina;
• "Crusher1991", 107,350,940, Austria;
• "FindTheTruth", 62,258,203, USA;
• "ZackThornton", 42,630,169, Croatia;
• "SebTozzi", 36,768,230, United Kingdom;
• "mozart528", 31,200,358, USA.

The partypoker Team Pro João Simão was perhaps the most famous player on the final table.

Just a few minutes after starting the final table, "FindTheTruth" shoved all-in with 8d8s and "Crusher1991" called with AcKc; the board 4s6c9cTs3c gave Crusher1991 a flush. "SebTozzi" was the next player eliminated by the chip leader João "galodoido13" Simão (all-in preflop AhTh vs. 7s7h, board 2dJdAs8dQd).

In the very next hand "mozart528" bite the dust, eliminated by "Crusher1991". Slowly but steady, Simão won a few crucial hands to "gillobono" and became a massive chip leader of the final table.

The chips flew from player to player and the final table had different chip leaders, and even the shortstack "ZackThornton" doubled up with "gillobono"; after this, the 5-hand play lasted over an hour and all stacks were similar, until the blinds forced the players to be more aggressive.

After the eliminations of "Crusher1991" by Simão and "ZackThornton" by "gillobono" the 3-handed game started with the two Latin Americans and the British player.

The final heads-up was played by "galodoido13" and "Saranga," and it started with both players having similar chip stacks. In the end, the Brazilian player won the tournament.

The Venom $6M final table payments:

• "FindTheTruth": $74,814
• "SebTozzi": $109,188
• "mozart528": $155,694
• "Crusher1991": $234,552
• "ZackThornton": $363,960
• "gillobono": $553,354
• "Saranga": $746,118
• "galodoido13": $1,039,982

Conclusions

With this new successful The Venom, WPN probed that online poker in the US is alive and that many players are willing to join high-stakes events on alternative poker networks. Brazil can now be called a poker superpower because it has won the two editions of The Venom.

It is also worth noting that the second edition drew almost the field as the first tournament, so we can conclude that although the interest exists, more hard work is needed to attract more players to the tables. 

Phil Nagy, WPN's CEO, shared with us his thoughts about The Venom $6M:

The $6 Million Venom was a huge success and we couldn’t be prouder of what we’ve achieved. With just a 4-month lead time after the $5 Million Venom wrapped in the summer, we went into this even bigger tournament with an extremely ambitious focus. And the results have been phenomenal, with a $6,740,000 final prize pool — our biggest ever. We’ve come a long way since the days of 6-figure overlays in our Million Dollar Sunday. Wait until you see what’s next.

he Venom is also a great result for the cryptopoker industry, as 60% of the whole WPN transactions are processed via cryptos; the tournament winner received over $1M worth in BTC just a few minutes after beating the heads-up. WPN not only hosts The Venom but also many tournament series like OSS and usually, all events cover the guaranteed prize pools.

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