Americas Cardroom (ACR) is getting more market attention with every passing month as the online poker room continues to run more poker tournaments that have big guarantees. ACR has been overshadowed for a number of years by the top poker operators like PokerStars, 888poker, and partypoker.
While ACR still cannot compete with the big boys, the online poker room is building a strong database of loyal players who prefer to play at ACR tournaments for a number of reasons. One school of thought is that the overall competition at the online poker table is a lot less when compared to the big operators like PokerStars and GGPoker.
Venom PKO III
ACR got a good market response when it launched Venom PKO I as there were more than 2,000 player signups and the guaranteed prize pool crossed $7 million. The poker operator had similar success with Venom PKO II as once again over 2,000 players signed up at more than $7 million in prize money was received.
ACR has announced that Venom PKO III will have a $5 million guarantee and run in September. Based on previous results, ACR is confident that it will have a good showing and the $5 million guarantee will be surpassed. To find out more information about Venom PKO III, please check out the Americas Cardroom website.
The winner of Venom PKO I was Pinguinachica who received $751,068 and Rydo won Venom PKO II and collected $738,134. The winner of Venom PKO III is expected to take home a paycheck that is in the high six figure range.
PKO Tournaments – Explained
The PKO format in poker is popular because it enables you to win a chunk of money even if you don’t finish in the top three. These progressive knockout tournaments (PKOs) will see all players starting with a bounty on their head. The standard procedure for most PKOs is to take 50 percent of the buy-in amount and use it as your bounty while the other 50 percent goes into the prize pool.
Whenever you eliminate a player, you take 50 percent of their bounty on your head and 50 percent into your account. Let’s use an example to give you more clarity.
If you start out with a $200 bounty on your head and you take out another player who has a $300 bounty on their heads, then the break up is as follows. You get $150 added to your bounty so your bounty goes up to $350 ($200 plus $150) while an additional $150 goes into your account.
Poker players can end up making money even if they knock out one or two players during the PKO. The further they get in the tournament by knocking out players, the more money they are likely to accumulate. ACR is promoting Venom PKO III as the biggest online PKO tournament ever.
If ACR ends up having a huge turnout and the total player registrations go well above the 2,000 mark, the eventual winner might get very close to that $1 million payout.
ACR And Overlays
ACR does expect a huge turnout at Venom PKO III but has deliberately played down the tournament after its Venom V tournament suffered an overlay. ACR went out on a limb and took a risk to promote Venom V with a $10 million guarantee. This was a big move by ACR and CEO Phil Nagy as the $10 million guarantee was the biggest guarantee in Venom tournament history.
Venom V did well but the Main Event fell short by 70 registrations which resulted in a $175,000 overlay for ACR. ACR has suffered overlays before with aggressive promotions. This is one of the main reasons why ACR has decided not to go overboard with Venom PKO III and err on the side of caution with the $5 million guaranteed prize pool.
ACR is also running a number of satellite events in the lead-up to the Venom PKO III Main Event.