Hello, as the knockout tournament format is one of the most popular in poker at the moment, I think it would be useful for every poker player to know how to calculate the extra value in the pot that comes from being able to knock an opponent out of a tournament and thus get a bounty on the knockout. First of all, we will discuss the main types of knockout tournaments, of which there are 4.
1. Progressive knockout - probably the most popular knockout tournament format, which differs from other simple knockout tournaments in that part of the money for a knockout goes directly into your pocket, while the other part stays on your "head", thus increasing the bonuses for the knocked out players as the game progresses. For example, the initial head of a player is worth 3 dollars, if you discard this player you will get 1.5 dollars directly into your account, and the rest will be added to your discarding bonus, so if the initial bonus was 3 dollars, if you discarded this player, it will become 4.5 dollars. Progressive knockout tournaments are usually super knockout tournaments, meaning that half the buy-in goes into the bounty pool, but there are exceptions. By the way, if you win a progressive knockout tournament, you get all the money accumulated on your "head".
2. Super Knockout (non-progressive) - In this format you get half the buy-in for the player you knock out and it goes directly into your account, for example if the tournament has an $11 buy-in it will be $5 to the regular prizepool, $5 to the bounty prizepool which goes to the player who knocked their opponent out of the tournament and $1 to the rake.
3. Knockout - these tournaments differ from the ones above in that the share of the prize pool going to the bounty prizepool is less than half the buy-in, probably the most common is around 20%, for example, in a $5.50 buy-in tournament, $4 goes to the regular prizepool, $1 goes to the bounty prizepool, and $0.50 goes to the rake, so that if you drop a player, you'll get $1 right away.
4. Ultra knockout, mega knockout (usually progressive) - this type of tournament is very rare and doesn't even have a proper name, it's usually held on the Winamax series and one daily tournament on the PokerStars.fr platform, and the idea is that there is little or no regular prizepool. For example, in a Winamax $10 buy-in tournament of this type, $9 goes for the bounty, $1 goes in the rake and there is no regular prizepool. And on PokerStars.fr, a $10 buy-in Hitman tournament on the PokerStars.fr platform has $8 going to the bounty prizepool, $1 to the regular prizepool, and another $1 to the rake.
As an example of where to find what proportion of the prize pool is regular and what proportion is bounty, I've attached a screenshot from the PokerStars room in the bounty tournament lobby, the red areas show how much money is going where. In other poker rooms you can also find this information in the tournament lobby.
And the key thing is how bounties affect you in the game. So, if there is a situation where there is a chance for you to win all of your opponent's chips and get the money for his head, you need to add a certain amount of chips to your existing pot, and I'll discuss what that should be and show you how to calculate it below. It's actually very simple, we just need to know how much of the regular prizepool buy-in is the amount of money we get for the player who is knocked out. As an example, taking the numbers in the screenshot above, this is an $11 progressive knockout tournament, which means that $1 goes to the rake, $5 goes to the regular prizepool and $5 goes to the bounty, but in a progressive tournament, if we knock out a player, we will only get $2.5, so the calculation should be like this:
2.50 (the amount pocketed when a player is kicked out) : 5 (the part of the buy-in going to the regular prizepool) = 0.5, so we get half the buy-in of the regular prizepool when the player is kicked out, then we multiply the result by the initial chip count, in this case 5000, so 5000 * 0.5 = 2500, so if we have a situation where we get an opponent's all-in head, we add those 2500 chips to the pot and then calculate how much equity we need in the pot.
A few more examples:
4 to regular prizepool. 1 bounty pocketed immediately, starting stack of 5000.
1 : 4 = 0.25 , 5000 * 0.25 = 1250, so we are adding 1250 chips to the pot if there is a chance of winning your opponent's head by responding to his all-in.
Progressive knockout tournament $5 to the regular prizepool and $5 to the bounty, but the opponent we're playing against has already dumped four players with their starting heads, so his head is $15 and dumped into the pocket for $7.5 with a starting chip stack of 5000.
7.50 : 5 = 1.5 , 5000 * 1.5 = 7500, so in this case we would add 7500 chips to the pot.
By the way, in progressive knockout tournaments, if we win a tournament we get all the money on our "head", but at the start of the tournament the odds of winning it are so small that we ignore it and don't include it in the calculations. Also, if you have a progressive knockout final table, the ICM factor is lower than in regular tournaments, because the money jump between first and second place is very large (due to the fact that by winning the HU, we get our head and our opponent's head straight in our pocket), so often the higher risk often pays off in the long run. If you don't know what is ICM factor You can find a video about it in the video section of www.pokeriomokykla.com.
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