ACR Poker Turns 25

ACR Poker has had quite a fortnight. On 4 September its two Venom tournaments finished up together, having paid out $15.095 million between them across 6,030 entries — the biggest pair the room has ever run. Two days later it launched OSS XL: 336 events, more than $50 million guaranteed, the largest series in its history.

That's a quarter of a century in, and the numbers are still climbing.

ACR has been serving players since 2001 and turns 25 this year. The route from there to here runs through a world record, an early and faintly reckless-looking bet on cryptocurrency, and one tournament that grew into the biggest thing in US-facing online poker.

From 2001 to a top-five room

ACR started life in 2001 as the flagship brand on a small network running software almost nobody remembers now. For most of its first decade it was a modest operation.

What changed was the arrival of the Winning Poker Network, which the operation rebranded to in January 2012, and of Phil Nagy, the CEO who has run it ever since. Nagy has said he took over a company of 15 people. It's now north of 400 worldwide.

The climb was steep and it happened fast. In September 2017, Forbes reported that WPN had gone from 45th in the PokerScout traffic rankings to 7th in the space of three years — Nagy put the turnaround down to restructuring the company around two-week development sprints, of all things. It hasn't stopped climbing since: current traffic trackers place ACR in the global top five, and it's comfortably the biggest name in US-facing online poker.

Along the way it picked up three sister rooms sharing the same tables — Black Chip Poker, Ya Poker and True Poker — which is why a WPN tournament tends to be bigger than the brand on the front door would suggest.

The Venom

If ACR has one thing that's genuinely its own, it's this.

The name first appeared in November 2018 on a weekly Sunday tournament with a $1 million guarantee. That was already big for the US-facing market. Then in July 2019 ACR attached the Venom name to something else entirely — a multi-day event with a $5 million guarantee and a $2,650 buy-in, at a time when nobody serving American players was putting up numbers remotely like that.

That bigger Venom is the one people mean now, and it has grown almost every time it's run.

Worth being precise about the two headline numbers there, because they measure different things. The August 2026 pair is the largest ACR has ever run combined, at $15 million across two tournaments. The May 2024 Venom is still the largest single tournament in the room's history, at a $12.6 million prize pool from one event.

One detail from August worth keeping: a player called R88P entered the PLO Venom by accident, went on to finish 13th, hit the $250,000 top mystery bounty on the way, and left with $275,840.

The world record

The first big Venom produced the hardest, best-attested fact in ACR's whole history.

On 24 July 2019, Brazil's Rafael "TheBigKid" Moraes won it. First prize was $1,050,559.50, and ACR paid it in Bitcoin — 104.23 coins at the exchange rate on the day.

That went into the record books. Guinness World Records recognised it as the largest cryptocurrency payout ever made to the winner of an online poker tournament, credited to the Winning Poker Network and logged in San José, Costa Rica. The entry notes a final table of eight players from six countries and a heads-up finale that ran five hours and six minutes.

A note on wording, because it trips people up: Guinness files the record under the word "jackpot". In poker that word usually means a bad beat jackpot or a jackpot sit-and-go, and this was neither. It was an ordinary tournament first prize that happened to be paid in Bitcoin — the record is about the size of the crypto payment, not the format of the game.

It's a strange sort of record for a poker room to hold, and a fitting one — because getting money to players quickly has been ACR's quiet obsession for a decade.

The crypto bet

ACR started taking Bitcoin on 9 January 2015. That's early. Deposits were capped at $1,000 a day and converted straight to dollars, and at the time it read as a curiosity.

By October 2017 the room accepted more than 60 cryptocurrencies. Nagy's line to Card Player at the time was disarmingly honest: "We don't pretend to be cryptocurrency experts, and we aren't backing one over another."

Eighteen months later it was sending a Venom winner over a million dollars in Bitcoin and setting a world record doing it. Crypto banking is now the single thing players consistently rate ACR highest for — payouts usually land inside the hour — and the room got there by starting a long time before it was fashionable.

Game integrity

No 25-year history is all upward, and ACR's harder stretch came around 2018 and 2019, when online poker as a whole was reckoning with bots and the room took a lot of criticism over it.

What came out of it is the thing worth knowing about. In April 2019, ACR published a reimbursement policy — it compensates players affected by verified cheating, with a stated cap of $25,000 per offending account, distributed among the players who lost money to them. Tournament refunds use a "ladder up" method: the offender is removed, everyone below moves up a place, and the difference is paid out.

It's not perfect and ACR has never claimed it is. But it's public, it's specific, and no major competitor publishes anything comparable — most rooms handle this privately, if at all. For a policy born out of a bad period, it's aged into one of the more genuinely unusual things about the room.

The team

ACR's biggest signing was Chris Moneymaker, who joined in February 2021 — the man whose 2003 WSOP win created the online poker boom in the first place, fronting a room built for the players that boom produced.

In May 2026 the roster got considerably heavier with Chance Kornuth, Alex Foxen and Chris Hunichen all signing on. Moneymaker called it "a massive moment for us," and for once the phrase was doing real work rather than press-release duty.

What's happening right now

Two things, and both are live as you read this.

The 25th Anniversary Tournament — a $2,500,000 guaranteed event with a $250 buy-in, built specifically for the birthday. It runs an unusual format: 21 separate Day 1 flights stretching from July into late September, with stacks accumulating rather than replacing each other, so you can fire more than one and take the combined total through. Day 1s are still running. Day 2 is Monday 28 September, and the final table plays out on the 29th.

OSS XL — the largest series ACR has ever run. 336 events across 24 days, more than $50 million guaranteed. It started on 6 September and the first day alone produced a $670,800 High Roller.

If you were ever going to look at ACR, a fortnight where the anniversary tournament and the biggest series in the room's history overlap is not a bad one to pick.

Twenty-five more?

Asked by Card Player in January what comes next, Nagy's answer was short: "25 more years, YES!"

Make of that what you will. What's measurable is that the room is running its biggest-ever series in its 25th year rather than coasting on the anniversary, that the Venom has grown every few years since 2019, and that a poker site holding a Guinness World Record for paying someone in Bitcoin is, whatever else it is, not boring.

Our full ACR Poker review covers what it's actually like to play there now — the rakeback routes, the traffic, the banking terms and the things worth knowing before you deposit.

FAQ

How old is ACR Poker? ACR has been serving players since 2001 and marks 25 years in 2026. It was known as Americas Cardroom until July 2023, when it rebranded to ACR Poker alongside a full software overhaul. Both names are still in use.

What is the Venom? ACR's flagship tournament. It began as a weekly $1m event in November 2018 and became a multi-day tournament with a $5m guarantee in July 2019. The August 2026 edition ran as two events — $12m No-Limit Hold'em and $3m PLO — for $15m combined.

What's the biggest tournament ACR has ever run? By single-event prize pool, the May 2024 Venom: $12,612,500 across more than 5,000 entries, won by Dominik Nitsche for $1,818,044.

Does ACR Poker hold a world record? Yes. In July 2019 it paid Venom winner Rafael Moraes a first prize of $1,050,559.50 in Bitcoin — 104.23 coins — which Guinness World Records recognised as the largest cryptocurrency payout to the winner of an online poker tournament. Guinness files it under the word "jackpot", but it was a standard tournament first prize, not a bad beat jackpot.

Who owns ACR Poker? ACR is the flagship room of the Winning Poker Network, operated by International Processing Services S.A., registered in Panama and licensed by the Anjouan Gaming Board. Phil Nagy has been CEO since the network's 2011–12 rebrand.

Can I still enter the 25th Anniversary Tournament? Day 1 flights run into late September, with Day 2 on 28 September 2026 and the final table on the 29th. The buy-in is $250 and the guarantee is $2.5 million. Check the current schedule for the remaining flights.

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Reviewed by the WikiPoker editorial team · Published 8 September 2026 · How we rate