2 VENOM Tournaments, w/$6.5M Total GTD @ WPN: Oct. 12 – 29

October 2025 brings another installment of the Venom tournament to the Winning Poker Network. As has been true for a while now, there will actually be two tournaments running simultaneously. There's $5 million in guaranteed prizes for a No Limit Hold'em event and another $1.5 million in a PLO tourney for a total of $6.5 million guaranteed. Both of these are Progressive Knockout tournaments.

Both of these Venoms will be running in tandem beginning on Sunday, Oct. 10. There are five starting days followed by three further days of play in the Hold'em tourney and two further days of play in the Omaha one, culminating with the final tables on Wednesday, Oct. 29 (NLHE) and Tuesday, Oct. 28 (PLO). You can access these tournaments from any participating site on the WPN, including ACR Poker, Blackchip Poker, True Poker, and Ya Poker.

To have a chance of claiming some of the loot, you can buy into either or both tournaments for the full sticker price of $2,500 + $150 apiece. Alternatively, you can gain access to the tournaments via satellite qualifiers of which there are plenty of viable options. This affords you the opportunity to play for life-changing money with whatever funds you can comfortably spare. There are even ways to advance through the qualifiers and score your Venom entry for a total cost of $0 with freeroll tournaments.

Key Details and General Structure

As befits its stature as one of the prestige events on the Winning Poker Network calendar, the VENOM does things a bit differently than most. The substantial prize money up for grabs and the large size of the expected field mean that a standard MTT structure simply will not do for a Venom.

Multiple Starting Flights

The most important structural detail of these two tournaments is that there are five individual Day 1 flights. Each of these starting days takes place on the same calendar days, making it easier for customers to play them both if they wish.

Day 1A is scheduled for Sunday, Oct. 12, and the next opportunity for joining the VENOM comes on Thursday, Oct. 16 when Day 1B will kick off. The third starting day will take place on Sunday, Oct. 19 followed by Day 1D on Thursday, Oct. 23. The final starting flight, Day 1E, will begin on Sunday, Oct. 26.

The starting time for all Day 1s is 12:05 p.m. ET for both Venom tourneys.

Multiple VENOM Entry Rules

You have the option of participating in multiple Day 1 flights. Your stacks will be combined and carried forward to your starting stack on Day 2.

However, you cannot use multiple network skins to play in the VENOM. Once you qualify for Day 1 from a single account on the Winning Poker Network, you will not be permitted to register for further Day 1s from another account. Should you obtain VENOM tickets from multiple accounts, you must contact customer support to have them transferred to a single account.

If you possess extra VENOM entries that you wish to sell or you want to purchase from someone who has extra, you can come to an agreement with the other party. Then you must both email tickettrade[at]winningpokernetwork[dot]com. Send this email from the address registered to your player account, and include the price agreed upon.

Subsequent Days

The survivors from all Day 1 fields will congregate for Day 2 on Monday, Oct. 27 at 1:05 p.m. ET. A third day of play will proceed at the same time Oct. 28 in the NLHE event; however, that is the day the PLO event will play out its final table starting 4:05 p.m. On Wednesday, Oct. 29 will the NLHE final table play out beginning at 4:05 p.m.

Progressive Knockout

Both the NLHE and PLO VENOMs will be held in Progressive Knockout format. What this means is that you will receive half of the bounty amount every time you eliminate an opponent from the tournament. The remaining half of the bounty will be transferred to your head!

Because the bounties start at the impressive figure of $1,250 apiece and only grow from there, you could stand to win some sizable bounty payouts should you survive to the latter stages of either of the tournaments. This is without even considering the life-changing potential of the regular prize pool.

Satellites Available

A myriad of satellites and other methods are available for you to utilize as a potential way of gaining access to the Venom tournament. These work perfectly for players who don’t have the initial $2,650 buy-in price in hand. There will be at least 469 seats handed out for the $5 million NLHE Venom and another 72 for the $1.5 million PLO Venom

Mega Satellites

Every weekend beginning on Oct. 12 and running through Oct. 26, there will be MEGA satellites priced between $55 and $630 and awarding between 5 and 30 guaranteed NLHE Venom seats. Sunday, Oct. 12 will host a single one of these MEGAs, but the other Saturdays and Sundays through Oct. 26 will see two of them running per day.

Meanwhile, three $290-buyin PLO MEGA satellites will run on Oct. 12,19, and 26 with 10 seats guaranteed apiece.

Of course, even these reduced amounts may still be too high to pay for micro-stakes grinders, but there are ways to qualify inexpensively for any given MEGA satellite:

• Freeroll --> $5.50 Super Satellite --> $55 MEGA satellite
• Freeroll --> $11 Super Satellite --> $109 MEGA satellite
• Freeroll --> $33 Super Satellite --> $290 MEGA satellite
• Freeroll --> $66 Super Satellite --> $630 MEGA satellite

Direct Satellites

If you don't want to worry about working your way through paths of multiple satellites, then you might be interested in direct VENOM satellites. They start running on Oct. 6. There are 314 NLHE VENOM and 42 PLO VENOM seats available via these satellites, which start as low as $33 buyins.

Poison Path

There's a set of four step tournaments that let you climb toward a coveted VENOM ticket. Each step lets you win a ticket to the next one. ACR refers to this journey as the Poison Path.

All tournaments along the Poison Path are Survivor Flips. These are eight-player contests wherein each player receives three cards and has a single decision: which card to discard. Then the board is dealt out automatically with no betting possible, and the holder of the worst hand is eliminated. Then the next hand begins, and the process continues until there's only a single remaining player.

The four steps of the Poison Path are:

• Step 1: $0.80
• Step 2: $6
• Step 3: $46
• Step 4: $350

Victory in Step 4 brings with it a $2,650 VENOM ticket. ACR has announced that the first 10 players to complete the Poison Path by starting at Step 1 and progressing through with a win at all four steps will receive a bonus $2,650 ticket for free. They will need to post screenshots of their step wins in the ACR Community Discord Channel.

VENOM Vault

ACR is bringing back the VENOM Vault, which involves the distribution of keys that can open the Vault and reveal randomized prizes. The prizes include VENOM seats as well as tickets for Venom satellites and straight cash added to your account. The Venom Vault is active from Sept. 29 to Oct. 26.

Anyone who makes their first deposit during this timeframe will receive seven keys to the Vault. In addition, you can pay 300 Combat Points or $2.99 to purchase an additional key. Perhaps the most interesting way of earning extra keys is by completing listed challenges. For example, you can play 25 raked cash game hands in a day to receive three keys or play five tournaments in one day to get a single key.

You can access the Venom Vault from the My Account section of the poker software. Everyone receives one key for free, so be sure to redeem yours before time expires.

Start Planning Today

All things considered, these two VENOMs are bound to be some of the biggest online poker tournaments of the year in terms of number of users participating and total prize money up for grabs. You only need to look at the outcome of the prior Venom tournaments to realize that. With so many opportunities to gain entry happening on a daily basis, it makes sense to take a crack at it and see if you can emerge from the season hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars richer.

Of course, in order to do so, you must have an account in good standing with ACR Poker or another reputable site on the Winning Poker Network. We advise our readers to register for ACR with our exclusive ACR Poker bonus code PRB10FREE. This will enable you to receive $10 with no deposit required. What's more, you’ll also get a 100% up to $2,000 bonus on your initial deposit. Read this detailed ACR review to learn more.

If you’d rather head elsewhere, then ACR Poker has several sister sites that provide the same access to the Venom and the rest of the tournament schedule although some of their welcome promos might be different. Check out these reviews of BlackChip Poker, True Poker, and Ya Poker (non-US) for information about these alternate WPN skins.

Oct. 1, 2025 – by Max Golden, Editor-in-Chief

Previous Venom Details