Bounty tournaments: how to play when every player has a price on their head

Start by turning the bounty into chips, because chips are what you risk when you call. A buy-in splits three ways: the starting bounty, the room's fee, and the part that goes into the prize pool. Take a $22 tournament with a $5 starting bounty, the figures we have seen in the lobby: if the fee is about $2, which is the usual order of size, the prize pool part is about $15. The bounty is then a third of what each player put into the prize pool, so at the start a bounty is worth about a third of a starting stack. The exact starting stack is in the lobby; with 10,000 chips to start, a bounty is worth about 3,300 chips.

In a progressive knockout the bounty is not fixed: when you knock a player out you collect part of their bounty and the rest is added to your own, so a player who has made knockouts carries a bigger prize, and the bounty you are chasing can be several times the starting one. The stacks grow too. When the average stack has tripled, a starting bounty is worth a ninth of an average stack, and only the grown bounties on the big stacks are still worth a detour. The bounty matters most in the first hour, when it is large next to the stacks, and least at the final table, where the prize money is what counts. Keep that in mind, because most players do the opposite: they ignore the bounties early and chase them late.

Here is the sum. The blinds are 100 and 200. A player with 2,000 chips, ten big blinds, goes all-in from the button. You are in the big blind with 8,000 and you cover them. Without a bounty you call 1,800 to win the 2,000 shove, the 100 small blind and your own 200, a pot of 4,100 after your call. You need to win 1,800 divided by 4,100 of the time, about 44%, so you call with a hand that has 44% or more against the hands they shove with.

Now add the bounty. If you win, you also collect about 3,300 chips' worth of money. The pot is in effect 7,400, and you need 1,800 divided by 7,400, about 24%. Almost any two cards win 24% of the time against a ten big blind shoving range from the button. So early in a bounty tournament, when you cover a short stack and the pot is only between the two of you, you call with hands you would fold anywhere else.

Three conditions have to hold. You must cover the player, or there is no bounty to win. The call must not put your own tournament at risk, so the sum is for a short stack shoving into your big stack, not for a coin flip for all your chips. And the bounty has to be large next to the stacks, which it is early and is not late. The pot odds calculator does the first part of the arithmetic; add the bounty in chips to the pot yourself.

The same arithmetic works against you. When your stack is short, every player who covers you calls your shove wider than they would in a freezeout, because your bounty makes the call cheap for them. Two things follow. Your shoves get through less often, so a shove that relies on them folding is weaker than usual, and a shove with a hand that is happy to be called is as good as ever. And because they call wider, your good hands get paid more. Shove a little tighter with your weak hands and a little more freely with your strong ones, which is the opposite of what a freezeout teaches.

Do not shove into two big stacks at once with a marginal hand. One of them calls for the bounty, and the other often comes along because they both want it. A multiway all-in with a one pair hand is how short stacks leave bounty tournaments.

A big stack in a bounty tournament has a job: to be the one who covers the short stacks when they shove. Sit on the left of the short stacks when the table lets you choose, and in a pot with a short stack and nobody else, call wide and isolate. Raise rather than call when a short stack limps, so that the bounty pot is between the two of you and not shared with a third player who has better cards.

What a big stack should not do is spend chips chasing bounties against other big stacks. A starting bounty is worth a third of a starting stack, and a coin flip for 40,000 chips to win 3,300 chips' worth of bounty is a bad trade. A grown bounty on a player who has made several knockouts is a different sum, so work it out each time rather than assuming. Take the cheap bounties, the ones where a short stack has to shove into you, and let the expensive ones go.

Near the money the prize pool is what you are playing for, and the independent chip model applies as in any tournament: chips you might lose are worth more than chips you might win, so you avoid the thin calls that are fine in a cash game. The bounties are still on the table, but each one is now small next to the stacks and small next to the pay jumps. A bounty that was a third of a stack in the first hour is an afterthought at the final table. Switch your thinking from bounties to payouts when the stacks reach about four or five times the starting stack, and switch all the way once the money bubble is near.

The one exception is a short stack shoving into you when you are a big stack and a bust-out moves everyone up the pay ladder. Then the bounty and the pay jump point the same way, and the call is easy.

• Calling a big stack's shove for a bounty. The bounty is worth a third of a starting stack; your stack is worth far more. You call a short stack for a bounty, not a tall one.
• Ignoring the bounties early and chasing them late. The bounty is largest next to the stacks in the first hour, and smallest at the final table.
• Shoving a weak hand into players who cover you and expecting them to fold. In a bounty tournament they call.
• Entering a multiway all-in with one pair because there is a bounty in the pot. Two callers cut your chance of winning far more than the bounty adds.
• Counting the bounty as cash in your head. It is paid as cash, but the decision at the table is about chips, so convert it once and use the chip figure.

The Bounty Blitz runs several times a day on WePlay with buy-ins from $16.50 to $33 and guarantees from $500 to $4,000, it is a progressive knockout, it allows re-entry while late registration is open, and it has no add-on. The Eliminator on Tuesday ($44, $5,000) and the Predator on Thursday ($33, $4,000) are knockouts of the same kind. The guarantee is paid whether the field fills or not. Our rule for WePlay stands here: every tournament with a guarantee is worth your time. The lobby shows the starting stack and the start time in your own time zone; our WePlay review has the rest of the room.