Quick Guide to Progressive Knockout Tournaments at PokerStars
The thrill of knocking a player out of a poker tournament and collecting a prize for doing so.
We imagine many of you know the feeling. It's hard not to crack a smile or do a mental fist pump.
Whether you experienced this feeling or want to grab some excitement for yourself trying something new, look no further than Progressive Knockout (KO) tournaments at PokerStars.
Play Progressive Knockout Tournaments at PokerStars
What are Progressive Knockout Tournaments?
Progressive KO tournaments run literally nonstop at PokerStars at a variety of buy-ins, poker variants, and tournament structures. They are available on your computer or you can play on mobile.
Low stakes players can play in tournaments starting at just $0.55 while the sky is almost the limit for the higher stakes players with daily High Roller Club Progressive KO tournaments with $1,050 buy-ins. The buy-ins can be even higher at times as evidenced during the 2020 Spring Championship of Online Poker (SCOOP) with $2,100 and $5,200 Progressive KO events.
Of course, all of the events boast great guarantees and you can qualify for events through satellites.
The prize pool in progressive knockout tournaments is separated between a standard prize pool and a bounty on each player.
The rules of poker are the same, but in this tournament the bounties are progressive in nature, meaning if you eliminate an opponent you collect half their bounty as a prize with the other half being added to your personal bounty.
Let's use last week's $22 Mini Thursday Thrill Late Edition Progressive KO as an example. Like many tournaments you see at PokerStars, the guarantee was smashed with 1,916 entrants generating $38,320 in total prizes.
Half of the prize pool or $19,160 went towards a $10 bounty on each entrant while the other half was paid out as a normal prize pool. Since the prize pool is smaller, a min-cash is often less than the buy-in as was in this event with the top 314 players guaranteed at least $19.93.
Take a look at the full Progressive KO tournament schedule on PokerStars
The beauty in these events is the bounties for each player grows. Let's say both you and another player at your table each eliminated opponents early in the tournament. You would each collect $5 straight away and your personal bounty would increase from $10 to $15.
If you take out the player with the $15 bounty your bounty will increase by half of this amount from $15 to $22.50 while you would also bank another $7.50.
It is easy to see how as the tournament advances many players will have bounties in multiples of the buy-in. This is especially true at the final table where there are not only ICM implications but also big knockout prizes to also consider.
Usually, first and second places get close to an equal amount of the prize pool. In this event, they both collected around $2,046.
The difference is all in the bounties as the winner is not only able to collect from all the players they eliminated but also their own bounty as well.
The winner in the tournament in Venezuela's "rickyl_86" collected $2,052 in bounties or more than what was paid out from the prize pool. Meanwhile, the runner up in Canada's "Fokman" was awarded $642 in bounties.
How to Win More From Bounty Tournaments
PokerNews wants your first foray into Bounty tournaments to be a successful one, so here are a few helpful tips from our recent Bounty tournament strategy guide:
- Think Of Bounties In Terms of Chips
- Don’t Be Late To The Party!
- Don’t Become Obsessed With Bounties In The Early Stages
- Bounties Play An Important Role In How Loose You Can Call Shoves
