Home Game Tutorial #5: Bounty Tournaments
While the other entries in the “Home Game Tutorials” series have been specific games, I think discussing bounty tournaments would be a good idea. Bounty tournaments are especially popular online, but they are far from rare in casinos, and in our case, home games.
A bounty tournament is any tournament where part of the prize pool is given as a reward for eliminating other players. Each player starts with a bounty on their head and when they get eliminated, the person who knocked them out gets said bounty. There are three main types of bounty tournaments, Standard bounty, where each knockout is worth the same amount, mystery bounty, where the bounties are worth different amounts and are undisclosed to players until the elimination occurs, and progressive bounty, which is only really seen online, where half of the bounty awarded goes to the player who earned it, and the other half is added t the bounty on their head. Standard bounty works best at a home game, as there isn’t a big enough field for a big mystery bounty jackpot, and progressive bounties are troublesome to calculate as the tournament goes on.
To start, determine how much a bounty is worth. I recommend that bounties should be important and something to aim for, but they should not overshadow the standard tournament play. A good range is around 10-30% of the prize pool should go to the bounties. If you want to host a $35 tournament, you could divide the buy-ins into $30 for the prize pool and $5 bounty on each player for a smaller emphasis on bounties, or $25 to the prize pool and $10 for each bounty for a bigger emphasis on bounties.
But how do you keep track of how many bounties a player has collected? It’s simple, assuming you have separate cash and tournament sets, which any host definitely should. Just give each player cash chips equal to the bounty. As an example, if you have a $35 tournament with a $5 bounty, give each player a $5 chip, if they bust, they must give it to the person who eliminated them. If they have multiple bounty chips when they bust, they only need to give one to the person who knocked them out, and they can cash out the rest. For example, if someone eliminates 3 people and then gets eliminated themselves, they get $15 in bounties. Also, the winner of the tournament keeps all their bounty chips and can cash them out, in addition to their winnings.
Lastly, there is an important caveat when it comes to bounty tournaments. Let’s say player A covers player B who covers player C. The three of them go all in on the same hand. C wins the main pot, and A wins the side pot to eliminate B. One might think that C would get the bounty because he won the main pot. However, since B covered C, he would not be able to eliminate her. Since A eliminated B via the side pot action, he takes the bounty from B.
