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$15 Million Up for Grabs as Americas Cardroom Expands Venom Mystery Bounty Series

Americas Cardroom is raising the stakes for online poker players this summer with the launch of its largest Venom festival to date, headlined by two Mystery Bounty tournaments carrying a combined $15 million in guaranteed prize pools. Running from August 13 through September 2, the Dual Mystery Bounty Venoms celebrate the poker site’s 25th anniversary with record guarantees, larger qualification opportunities and the biggest Venom schedule ever offered.

Two Headline Mystery Bounty Events

The festival is anchored by a $12 million guaranteed No-Limit Hold’em Venom and a $3 million guaranteed Pot-Limit Omaha Venom, with both tournaments featuring a $2,650 buy-in and eight Day 1 starting flights, the highest number in Venom history.

Mystery bounty prizes add another layer of excitement once Day 2 begins. The No-Limit Hold’em event includes a top bounty worth $500,000, while Pot-Limit Omaha players can chase a $250,000 top bounty. Every mystery bounty awarded will be worth at least $5,000, giving players the chance to score significant payouts even before reaching the final table.

Players who survive any Day 1 flight automatically lock up a cash finish before the mystery bounty phase begins. Those who qualify through multiple starting flights can also merge their surviving chip stacks for Day 2, providing an additional strategic edge.

More Satellites, Bigger Guarantees and Anniversary Promotions

Americas Cardroom is also expanding access to the series through its Venom Fever promotion, which guarantees more than 1,500 tournament seats across a variety of qualification formats.

Players can earn entries through Direct Satellites, Mega Satellites, Beast tournaments and Survivor Flips, with some qualifying routes available at no cost. The festival grows even larger beginning August 17, when the operator introduces its Venom Specials, a schedule of supporting tournaments featuring more than $10 million in added-value guarantees throughout the remainder of the series.

Day 1 flights will run until August 30, followed by Day 2 on August 31. The No-Limit Hold’em championship concludes with its final table on September 2, while the Pot-Limit Omaha event crowns its winner the same day.

With record guarantees, expanded qualification opportunities and some of the largest mystery bounty prizes ever offered on the platform, the Dual Mystery Bounty Venoms represent the biggest online poker festival in Americas Cardroom’s history and one of the headline tournament series of 2026.

bitcoin-craze

Poker Players Capitalize on Bitcoin to Enhance Their Winnings

Bitcoin has been on a roll of late and it is not just crypto enthusiasts that have taken notice of the surge in the digital currency’s price. Now, several successful online gamblers have begun to capitalize on the bump by cashing out using Bitcoin from their favorite poker sites.

Some of the sites that this has been happening to include the AmericasCardroom.eu and its sister sites under the Winning Poker Network (WPN) umbrella. The renowned poker operator has had to buy millions of dollars’ worth of Bitcoin in recent weeks to cater to their users who want to cash out using the digital currency.

Winning Poker Networks Chief Executive Office Phil Naggy revealed that about 90 to 95 percent of their users are now asking for payouts in Bitcoin simply because of the rise in the cryptocurrency’s price.

“We are constantly having to go out and buy Bitcoin — lots. Lots. More than we’ve even had to before,” the CEO commented.

The high demand for Bitcoin is not entirely a new thing but it does represent some pretty interesting dynamics for the online poker sites that are involved as well as the iGaming industry as a whole.

Cause for Concern?

Even though the sites that are seeing the massive surge in Bitcoin payouts are not legally available in the United States, most of the customers are actually Americans. Now, offshore gambling is not entirely unheard of in many states even those where online poker is still illegal. However, since crypto is involved, much more can be read from the situation.

Perhaps one of the biggest concerns is that crypto enthusiasts may be using the online poker platforms as a means to evade taxation. To put this into perspective, the Winning Poker Network which is based in Costa Rica does not regulate certain aspects of their customers’ activities. The most notable one in this regard is the winning and losses – the players are allowed to file their winnings and losses on their own. There is no guarantee that they will file the right figures in this case.

Moreover, the current activities also come with some issues for the online poker operators that have integrated crypto payment methods. Bitcoin is still not considered to be fully stable, at least not yet. That said, the operators are always stuck with it regardless of the situation. As Phil Nagy points out, in cases where Bitcoin’s price drops, their uses who have Bitcoin usually send them to the operator since this is more often than not the fastest way to liquidate the digital tokens.