In this post, we are going to look at some tips on playing Knockout Bounty tournaments, these are typically Progressive knockouts where each player has a prize on their head and when they bust from the tournament half of this is rewarded to the player that busts them and the other half is put on that players head so that their bounty increases.
These games have a big change in the effect of how we should play in general, compared to just playing for chip EV we have a lot more to think about, so let’s look at some key tips…
Get Aggressive Early
Too many players will play these formats tight early on, but this is a big mistake because we will need to have players covered to be able to play for the bounty portion of the prize pool, if we don’t have anyone on our table covered we are playing for less money!
Learn the Math of Knockouts
It’s easy to calculate how much extra EV is involved in the bounty that can be at stake in a game, let’s look at a quick example.
A player moves all-in with a single bounty in a PKO (Progressive Knockout Tournament) with blinds at 150/300 with a 30 running ante, they have 3000 Chips and we are in the Big Blind contemplating a call.
We have to call off 2,700 into a pot of 6,270 chips in total. Which would normally mean we would need around 43% to call profitably here, equating to a pretty tight range.
HOWEVER! There’s a twist, we can add half a starting stack of chips to each bounty on the players head, so with them having a single bounty that’s an extra 1,500 chips of equity in the middle as that is the cash value of winning the all-in.
So, let’s look again… If we have to call off 2,700 into a pot of 7,770 chips in total. This means we will only now need 34.7% equity to call off.
This means that if we give our opponent a pretty typical solid shoving range off this stack like 22+ A3o+ K8o+ K6s+ etc we can call with around 75% of our holdings effectively as we will always have decent equity with almost any two cards with just some removal of the worst offsuit lowest holdings like 62o, T5o etc which would be a slightly losing call as these hands would only give us around 31% equity against our opponents range.
Now these bounties can get more tricky to estimate, but you will get the hang of it in time, the larger the bounty the more we will want to go for it, let’s say a player gets short stacked in late game and has a 10x bounty on their head, presuming this is a 3,000 starting stack PKO game this will now equate to an extra 15,000 chips in the pot.
Players Will Call Super Wide
So we have hopefully broadened our minds on how we will want to slightly alter our calling ranges when bounties are on the line, however, there will be players that will be calling way too wide just in the hopes of scooping our bounty when we move all in, so… how should we be countering this?
We will need to be shoving much tighter depending on the size of our bounty, even with just one bounty on our head we will want to have a tighter shoving range than usual as there will be more chance of us being called so we will want more equity to override this and give us a better chance of survival.
As we have a larger bounty we will want to get tighter and tighter in our shoving range because with just a double bounty on our head chances are nearly 100% so we will want to adjust our ranges based on this too.
We will want to shove hands that perform better in multiway pots as there is more chance of more than one player calling us, so shoving hands like 22–44 is going to be much worse than shoving hands like T9s, JTs or K9o for example.
Final Tables
At this point bounties are massive so we will still want to be going for these with wide ranges, as on final tables I’ve been on I’ve witnessed players bounties that can be the same as getting 3 pay jumps!
So we will want to look at the players we cover and evaluate what is better for us to do with our stack, gamble for bounties or ladder up some pay jumps.
These final tables can be aggressive minefields where we will need to be careful in the selection of our spots when we are in the middle of the field but at the same time, we need to be pushing to get a big stack and take down the tournament because the payout structure is heavily top-weighted in these games.
Let’s not forget that the winner of the tournament will not only collect the last player they knockout’s bounty but their own too! This means the pay jump from second to first in these games is huge! A look at this recent high roller PKO on Pokerstars shows us that second place got $20,750 with First place bagging themselves more than that in bounties alone! Taking home $37,186!
This is pretty common when it comes to these games, first place often collects around twice the amount of second place, but payouts on the way up the ladder almost seem pretty flat in comparison, so once you’ve locked up a top spot look for things to get super aggressive in these games and try and shoot for the win.
Get 30 Free Spins with No Deposit
This amazing casino allows you to sign up and try and win big for free! With 30 Free Spins on one of your games of choice including Irish Riches, Santa’s Super Slot, Pirates Millions, Millionaire Genie or Rise of the Pharaohs.
After your initial free play if you want to deposit more funds you will get your first deposit doubled with the 100% Welcome Bonus up to £/$/€ 100! Players can deposit £/$/€ 20 but play with £/$/€ 40! or deposit £/$/€ 100 and play with a huge £/$/€ 200 balance! Double your Money and double your chances!
SIGN UP TODAY! & Claim your free spins
As with any bonus of this nature, there are some wagering limitations with how much players must play before they can withdraw, but it’s a pretty reasonable amount! Check the Full Terms to make sure it’s for you!