Knockout Tournament Types
1. Progressive knockout – probably the most popular knockout tournament format, which differs from other simple knockout tournaments in that part of the money for knocking out a player goes directly into your pocket, while the other part remains on your “head” and thus increases the bounties for knocked-out players during the game.
For example, the initial player's head is worth 3 dollars, knocking out this player you get 1.5 dollars directly into your account, and the other part adds to the bounty for your knockout, so if the initial bounty was 3 dollars, knocking out this player it becomes 4.5 dollars. Usually, progressive knockout tournaments are of the super knockout type, meaning half of the buy-in goes to the bounty prize pool, but there are exceptions. Moreover, winning a progressive knockout tournament you get all the money accumulated on your “head”.
2. Super knockout (non-progressive) – in this format, for knocking out a player you get half the buy-in and it goes directly into your account, for example, if the tournament is an 11-dollar buy-in, it will be 5 dollars into the regular prize pool, 5 dollars into the bounty prize pool which the player receives for knocking out an opponent from the tournament, and 1 dollar rake.
3. Knockout – these tournaments differ from the previously mentioned ones in that the part of the prize pool going to the bounty prize pool is less than half of the buy-in, probably the most common variant is about 20 percent, for example, in a 5.50 dollar buy-in tournament, 4 dollars go to the regular prize pool, 1 dollar to the bounty prize pool, and 0.50 dollars to rake, and it turns out that knocking out a player you immediately get 1 dollar.
4. Ultra knockout, mega knockout (usually progressive type) – this type of tournament is very rare, so it doesn't even have an exact name, these tournaments usually take place during the Winamax series and one daily on the PokerStars.fr platform, their essence is that the regular prize pool is very small or there is none at all.
For example, in a Winamax 10-dollar buy-in of this type of tournament, 9 dollars go for the bounty, 1 dollar rake, and there is no regular prize pool. On the PokerStars.fr platform in the Hitman tournament with a 10-dollar buy-in, 8 dollars go to the bounty prize pool, 1 dollar to the regular prize pool, and another 1 to rake.
As an example of where to find what part of the prize pool consists of regular and what part of the bounty, I added a screenshot from the PokerStars room bounty tournament lobby, in the places marked in red you can see where the money goes. In other poker rooms, you can also find this information in the tournament lobby section.
And the essential thing, what impact the bounty has on you in the game. So, if there is a situation where you have the opportunity to win all the opponent's chips and get the money for his head, you need to add a certain amount of chips to the current pot, and we will further discuss what it should be and show how to calculate it.
In fact, everything is very simple, we just need to know what part of the regular prize pool buy-in is the amount received for knocking out a player. As an example, we will take the numbers from the tournament screenshot above, so it is an 11-dollar progressive knockout tournament, which means that 1 dollar goes to rake, 5 to the regular prize pool, and 5 to the bounty, but in a progressive tournament, knocking out a player we will only get 2.5 dollars, so the calculation should look like this:
2.50 (amount received “in the pocket” for knocking out a player) : 5 (part of the buy-in going to the regular prize pool) = 0.5, we get that knocking out a player we will get half of the regular prize pool buy-in, then taking the obtained number we multiply it by the initial number of chips, in this case, 5,000, so it turns out 5000 * 0.5 = 2500, so if we have a situation when answering the opponent's all-in we will get his head, we add those 2500 chips to the pot and only then calculate how much equity we need in the pot.
Here are a few more examples:
Tournament 4 to the regular prize pool. 1 bounty, which we get immediately into the pocket, initial chip count 5000.
1 : 4 = 0.25, 5000 * 0.25 = 1250, so we get that we add 1250 chips to the pot if there is an opportunity to answer the opponent's all-in and win his head.
Progressive knockout tournament 5 dollars to the regular prize pool and 5 dollars to the bounty, but the opponent we are playing against has already knocked out four players with initial heads, so his head is 15 dollars and knocking him out we will get 7.5 dollars in the pocket, initial chip count 5000.
7.50 : 5 = 1.5, 5000 * 1.5 = 7500, so in this case, we would add 7500 chips to the pot.
Moreover, when playing progressive knockout tournaments, winning the tournament we get all the money on our “head”, but at the beginning of the tournament, the chances of winning it are so small that we ignore it and do not include it in the calculations.
Also, if you have a progressive knockout tournament final table, the ICM factor is smaller than in regular tournaments because the money jump between first and second place is very large (because winning HU we get our head and the opponent's directly into the pocket), so often greater risk pays off in the long run. If you don't know what the ICM factor is, you can find a video about it in the video section at www.pokeriomokykla.com.
