Ignore this post if it is being discussed elsewhere or if my understanding of the rules is incorrect.

But if it true that you get $500 every time you bust someone in this $1500 tournament there will undoubtedly be some quasi collusion or at least accusations of such because extremely short stacks (and sometimes larger ones) will be in position to partially decide who does and who does not get this money. If none of your buddies are in the pot you can wait a hand or two rather than going all in when you should, since the EV you give up is a lot less than $500. And that is just the most obvious scenario. There are many others. When the bounty is small and/or only select people are bounties this isn't a problem. But with this structure it is. Why risk the bad publicity of a minor scandal?

The poker community is a good place, and I doubt anyone would want to cheat.

The other issue is backer's being concerned that horses will pocket the bounties for themselves, it is an administrative headache from that standpoint.

Also from a live standpoint, the casino has to issue a W2G for profit over 5k in a tourney, and bounties may go towards that, which means there has to be more recordkeeping on who gets what.

I agree David, it's a horrible idea. Two players (or even a whole table) could go all-in the first hand, and you can't tell if they are colluding or just being smart. The right strategy may be to go all-in blind the very first hand. Though it will depend on how your opponents react, I'm pretty sure jamming with a high percentage of your hands is a Nash Equilibrium.

Thus paying $2500 for one double stack. And there are a lot of other theoretically interesting situations, both honest and dishonest. But it is the very small stack scenarios that I think are most problematic.

Stupid question. How is this different than any other bounty tournament that offers a bounty on each individual player? This isn't a 10k event, it's a 1500 dollar event and I don't believe any 1500 NL event got less than 1800 entries last year.

Not to mention there's also a prizepool players might be interested in winning. There's still 850 dollars going into the prize pool for each entry.

You two realize bounty tournaments are nothing new right? Is this thread one giant level? I don't get it. The only "new" thing here is that the WSOP is offering one this year.

Maybe there's some confusion because of the format that Bay 101 uses where only a select number of players have bounties.

Firstly - if being a med / high stakes tournament player is a prerequisite - I am not qualified to talk on this topic.

However, if my local casino hosted a bounty tournament I would jump in because the additional fun factor outweighs the possibility that a small number of people in the field may find a way to exploit the format in an unfair manner. Surely the WSOP bracelet allure adds an extra element to any decision to "collude" for a bounty or two in ev. In any event - knockouts, super knockouts and progressive knockouts make for exciting online tourneys so why not try it. If it turns into a dog show then can the event next year.

The administrative headache sounds like a legitimate worry but surely that the WSOP's problem and not the players.

Backers have a choice - they can choose not to back anyone they dont implicitly trust in this specific event.

I suspect the event will be popular enough with the casual players to make up for the concerns mentioned ITT.

If your intent was to somehow dump a bounty to a buddy if you got crippled I think a lot of things would have to occur, first you have to get a table draw that even has a buddy you would do such a thing, second you need to be in the right seat positions to make it an easy thing to do. Seems like it's a lot easier said than done. I think if someone is so crippled that their bounty is pretty much in play if they enter the pot, you might see a lot of open-limps and flats, or min-raise followed by call, call, call until action reaches the crippled "in-play" bounty. Even if there happens to be 4 buddies at the table who agree to "bounty dump", there are still 5 other players at the table that can spoil the best laid plans.

Somewhere, Doc Sands' ears are burning.

+1 and I FYP

They run these tournaments at Aussie Millions every year and there don't seem to be widespread problems of cheating/collusion

Sure it may happen on occasion but it happens in non bounty tournaments too sometimes. Just penalise/ban blatant cheaters and move on

Please draw my table, please draw my table

How is a wsop bounty tournament any different from bounty tournament that run all over the country everyday?

Pretty much everything the WSOP has done for the past 10 years has been a bad idea, from a theoretical standpoint.

But who has time for theory? There's money to be made!

i want mo hawkins' opinion

Don't see the difference between this and any bounty tournament.

This is different from normal knockout tourneys because of the % paid out as bounties. Every knockout tourney I've ever played paid out ~10% of your entry fee while this one will pay out 33%. I don't know if this will make a difference or lead to more collusion but I think that's why the question is being asked.

There is also the fact that with 2000 players and the press there, you could easily see unwarranted accusations being thrown around that would neither happen or be publicized at other tournaments. In fact I'd bet even money that there will a real or imagined incident of someone losing his stack when he shouldn't or not losing it when he should, to help or hurt someone else.

They have this exact tourney at LAPC every year and seems to have no problems. Not sure why the wsop would.

Do you people jsit look for stupid **** to try and bash the wsop on?

They tried hard this year and the schedule looks awesome and diff. I for one am really excited for the summer

I'm pretty sure multiple places run $1650s(1000+500+150) during tournament series. Unless there has been major issue in one before I don't see how this is any different. I understand higher prize pool creates a greater urge to collude and you do get a "refund" in theory but still.

I'm not sure I see the concern here. A player is short stacked and he chooses to wait and go all in against a friend when he theoretically should have done so earlier against an unknown opponent based on his cards? How is this different from any other tournament? The possibility exists that friends can chip dump whenever they want. It doesn't seem to me that bounty is big enough to make a significant difference in this situation.

Because in other tournaments the loss to the player is approximately equal to the gain to the friend. I'm amazed this hasn't come up before. Someone with a few chips turning down mega odds against someone he doesn't like.

So a bounty tournament has an added element of strategy--dont be an ******* at the table.

Good Post.

Crippled players will have no say in who gets their chips/bounty. A lot of loose calls and squeezes when a shorty is all in for a few BB's