Many players will be coming out of the woodwork to play these huge fields of WSOP online tournaments, so we wanted to go over some strategy on playing one of the most popular game types of the moment, Progressive Knockout Tournaments.

Play more aggressive

We are playing for half the prize pool as bounties, so in order to win one half of the pool, we need to build a stack where we have a good chance at knocking players out, therefore our overall strategy in these games should be much more aggressive.

Let’s say we have a really poor hand in the small blind and it’s folded to us but we have our opponent covered, well in these spots an all-in is super profitable and a few things back up this reasoning.

When we are called with any two cards we have equity and much more than that we can win the pot and our opponents bounty, which will then give us a bigger stack to try and win more bounties, so this has a knock-on effect to our possible earn in the tournament. If our opponent folds then we make a huge win by winning chips with a wide range of steals.

Get the last move in

You will notice players making really aggressive moves to try and isolate players that are very short, look to get the last move in these pots.

There are a few ways to do this, let’s say our opponent has just 2BBs and they are sat in the Big Blind, if we raise this pot and everyone just calls including the short stack, then we can’t put in any more action pre-flop to look to isolate this bounty opportunity, however, if we limp in this pot, allow someone else to raise then we can look to isolate and close the action with a limp 3-bet.

Make sure to pay close attention to these kinds of situations, as they can be big earners if you get them right.

Look to play suited connectors with solid equity

You will get some spots where you can try and clean up some bounties where players will have wide ranges, look to get involved with hands that play well in multiway pots, like JTs and 89s for instance rather than hands like A7o or small pairs like 22–66.

These hands are too easily dominated and won’t have great equity in multiway pots, I see way too many players thinking “well there are two bounties on the line here, I need to call with any Ace” but the reality is there are going to be better spots to gamble it up.

Size Up To Get All the Chips

To get someone’s bounty, we need to get all their chips, so a good way to start moving towards that plan is to size up our bets, now we would do this easily if we have value hands and if we are betting as a bluff too because we can either look to get huge value, or apply huge pressure.

Try to only do this with hands that make sense, you don’t want to turn mediocre hands into bluffs, so still look to pot control a little with your middling holdings, but look to bomb pots pre-flop and post-flop with your strong hands to allow you to get more chances at winning a players bounty.

Try and assess how big you have to go on each street of action to get all the chips in by the River, you may have to overbet each street to get the job done, so try and assess this on the flop, work out your sizing and get greedy with it!

Pay Less Attention to Small Bounties

These are players that are almost not playing the same game as us, they have not acquired any bounties either from playing a very nitty strategy or from being card dead, but they are way more likely to be giving action with stronger hands and we have less to gain from knocking them out.

So look to tighten your range when it comes to risking chips for small bounties and vice versa for large bounties, wide ranges make more sense here because we have more to gain from knocking them out.