Dominik Nitsche Wins $1.8M in ACR Poker Venom Tournament 


The world of offshore poker sites is still going strong, as evidenced by the record entries and prize pool for Winning Poker Network’s American Card Room Venom tournament this week. Despite regulated options by the bucket-load for U.S. players, some continue to flock to unregulated sites.

This week, the $12.5 million prize pool Venom online poker tournament attracted a record 5,045 entrants, with a $2,650 buy- in. Among them were some of the poker world’s biggest names.

The winner, German Dominik Nitsche, is himself a three-time WSOP bracelet winner. He walked away with $1.818 million for outlasting the 5,000 other entrants. That included beating all time poker legend Chris Moneymaker and 2023 World Series of Poker Player of the Year Ian Matakis. 

However, the first two days of the tournament were somewhat marred by the discovery of several bot accounts in play. One briefly held the day 1 chip lead in the tournament before being outed on social media and banned. 

Venomous Win 

The online tournament was played via screen names. Nitsche played under the name ‘Texassss’. 

The top 10 final table included Nitsche, ‘Push0rdie’, ‘Anzuelitico’, Doblou, and DinaTheDog. In seventh place was IanBeale, a name taken from a long-time character in the British soap drama EastEnders. 

Chris Moneymaker in 6th place chose to use his own name as a handle. 2023 Mid States Poker Tour Main Event winner Kou Vang came in fourth place under the name ‘AK_Dont_Play.’ 

Despite the storied competition, Nitsche came out on top. He was actually behind on chip lead against Push0rdie going into the final heads-up.

However, a series of smart plays lead it down to the final hand, where Push0rdies King Pair was not enough to beat Nitsche’s King and six two pair. 

“Obviously feeling amazing right now. Not too hungover anymore as well now finally. It almost doesn’t feel real. I was playing Venom from my hotel room in Monaco after I had made day 2 on the very first flight,” Nitsche said after his win. 

Bot Controversy

As often with unregulated online poker tournaments, ACR events are not usually without some kind of controversy. In this case, it came from four confirmed bot accounts. One of which actually had the second-most chips at the end of day one of the tournament.  

All the accounts were terminated by ACR, but not before being locked into the rest of the tournament and blinded out – meaning the accrued chips would be redistributed among the remaining players.

Some reports suggested the bots may have won up to $230,000 worth of chips from legit players before they were caught.

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