The first time I played an O8 ko I thought it was split pot as well but then realized it wasn't... A part of me thinks it should be split but another part of me would hate collecting only 1/2 a bounty every ko.... For all of you saying you had large bounties at the end of the tourney how would you feel if it was only half it's size cause you split it with others who won low hands?

That's an excellent point. I hadn't looked closely at it until today but the rake isn't applied to rebuys, which then poses the question, why would they change it?
Unless of course they thought that somehow players arriving at last minute, then taking a 30,000 add on was unfair to other players. Which would of course make no sense seeing as every player can take that approach if they choose and the downside is that you're very shallow stacked early on.

Congrats on those KO tournament results. I don't play many of them myself although I'm sure they do offer some interesting situations of trying to balance prize money against the risk of trying to take out a player with a big bounty on their head.

The method that the KO is split is just as "complicated" as the game of NLO8. I'm not sure how valid of an argument that is if you've registered to play in a "complicated" game where split pots occur every other hand.

In your above scenario, the bounty would be split by both AK players, but would display as a full bounty in the lobby of a regular KO tourney (non-PKOs).

One time, a guy I bought a % of in the $320 NLHoldem Super KO had 14 KOs displaying in the lobby, but he only was awarded 13.5 cause one was a chop.

I would agree with the bolded part if the way bounties have been awarded was what Pokerstars has intended all along for split pot games, we don't know if this was an overlook by the programmers or not.

As of this moment, there is still no mention in the tournament lobby of whether bounties are awarded to the winning high hand (despite Pokerstars' reps posting in this thread!).

I understand your sentiments, but split pots are part of the game. The low is awarded exactly the same as the high in a chop part - whether you have a royal flush vs A5678 low or a K high vs A2346, you each get an equal share of the pot. Why should the high (which won 50% of the pot) be awarded 100% of the bounty? It doesn't seem right.

You made an interesting observation on the poker cast this week, on the situation where the player eliminated has only a high hand even though there is a possible low.

But I do still think the KO should be split since the game is a split game.

Also that comment made me start thinking where does the qualification requirement for low comes from ? Could Omaha hi/lo be played without the requirement so there always is going to be a low ? Would this make an interesting game for people ?

Just some thoughts

In case the knocked out player doesnt have a low because there is no low hand possible for him because he had a high only starting hand or doesnt qualify for low (knocked out player:a229r,other hands a334r and aakj(rainbow) on a A236j board). Why should the player with the low hand a334r who splits get half of the bounty? He was not necessary to knock out a229r. I still prefer as it is with awarding only the high hand.

In the end Stars will have to split the bounty. That's because what's expected. Writing "high only takes all the bounty" when presenting the tournament looks like crap and will get protests. Not writing it is even worse, that is blowing players. Leaves only the natural alternative: splitting the bounty. Both high and low knock players out.

Bounty should be split. Period.

I think it is awful that Stars doesn't highlight this "house rule", as in PSKOs your low draws are just crap if there's any other player in. Awarding bounty solely to high hand changes strategy a lot and it is not good for poker.

Otherwise PSKO NLO8 is interesting format. Though I'd like to see few hyper turbo NLO8 PSKOs, as even regular PSKO NLO8 lasts quite long as you really can't late reg into it without losing good amount of equity.

If bounties are awarded to high only, I would say it's not a hilo-KO-mtt. I mean why not give the bounty to whoever has the most number of red cards in his hand......

bump. Just played the $82 today and the bounty is still being awarded to the high hand

This topic was mentioned by Pokerstars Steve on the TwoPlusTwo pokercast a few months ago and they said they were planning on reaching a definitive decision. Nothing publicly posted yet...

Ouh cmon please don't change it. No one is getting knocked out with a low hand. Just keep it this way. I like the gamble in it and I think that so does the recreationals.

I think it makes sense to split it. In a three way pot i might fold a low with no chance for the high as theres a chance im getting quartered but with a bounty on offer i might call.

I think if theres a scenario player A had Akk5 Player B had AJ36 and C had A236 and they get it in on the flop and the board comes J4689. without player C in the hand there wouldnt be a bounty for player B without C in the pot.

I think the player with the low directly affects the outcome and without going to showdown player A wouldnt be out the tournament.

It's the only fair way and the game relies on the low as much as the high. Being at both the Final Tables in the $82 and the $27 pko's i've found myself playing PLO hands to get the bounties as some of them were worth as much as a top three payout.

The game changes so much when people are trying to get a short stacks bounty and low hands decrease in value, when in a HI-Lo mtt this shouldn't be the case.

Just think the simplest way is to award the bounty on the % you win of the pot.

i think it should be the high hand that gets the bounty

splitting them would be just stupid....

I would prefer to split it but don't think it would be changed

1. Why should the player with the low hand a334r who splits get half of the bounty?

2. How do you want to split the bounty if there are 3 preflop allins, you are the smallest stack (for example 1000 chips) and make the nut low, 2nd biggest stack (2000 chips) gets eliminated and bigstack (7000 chips) makes nutstraight. Do want to give the shortstack 50% of the bounty then (he is not able to eliminate 2000 chipstack)? or 15% as suggested in the survey because he gets 1500 chips of the 10000 chips in the pot?


I prefer it the way it is (awarding high hand only). No need to make changes that do not make any sense.

Because the game you registered for is a split pot game called Omaha hi/lo; the high gets 1/2 of the pot and the low gets the other half. It's not PLO.

You guys that are in favor of the bounty going to Hi only, would you have the same opinion if the very first O8 KO tournament on PokerStars awarded it based on % of pot won? I have a feeling that you guys like it the way it is because it's been the status quo.

The reason these aren't given to % of pot won is because the software on Pokerstars is extremely outdated; most of the foundation is still from 5-6 years ago and at this time, they did not imagine there being a bounty tournament (or even a split-pot bounty tournament!).

I understand why they would award it this way for live tournaments; it's difficult to split a single bounty chip and the additional administrative costs, so high only makes sense. But online gives you the ability to do anything you want. Their IT guy needs to spend a few hours building a calculator and they're done.

The smallest stack is never entitled to a bounty because he/she doesn't have anyone covered. Even if the short stack scoops the entire pot (and the big stack has a better stack than the 2k stack), the big stack would win 2k's bounty.

This is true for all bounty tournaments. Here is an example of how side pot bounties work today in a NLHoldem tournament.

P1 (1k chips), P2 (2k chips) and P3 (7k chips) go all in pre.
P1 and P3 both make the nuts (AKQJT straight for example) and P2 has nothing. The pot would be distributed as follows:

-P1 (50% of main pot = 1500)
-P3 (50% of main pot = 1500)
-P3 (100% of side pot = 1000 chips)

Because P3's side pot contributed fully to P2's knockout, P3 wins 100% of P2's bounty.

This would be the same case in hi/lo using the % of pot won because P1 won 0% of the side pot and would be entitled to 0% of P2's bounty.

If P1 had P2 covered, he would get half, which is what I'm proposing (and believe is the correct way to account for hi/lo bounties).

Hopefully the above info changes your mind a bit?

My biggest concern right now is that Pokerstars knows of this situation, yet this information is not being advertised in the lobby or anywhere on their site. I wouldn't want to be a person playing a NLO8 PKO tournament for the first time and realize that my A235 has little KO equity deep in a tournament (when the bounties can be substantial).

This issue has been going around for quite some time, and I don't think they are going to change it ( I would preffer it split), however they should say it in the MTT lobby that the KO goes to the high only.

The game is played very very diferent when only high gets the KO and the KO is a very big one.

I think awarding the ko to the high hand favours regs over recreationals, due to the fact the recreational player will play more high hands looking for the bounties.

I agree at the business end of the tourney the bounties impact greatly on hand selection, but getting to the business end is sometimes easier because of people playing said hands.

Thanks to broken_jia for reminding me to post a conclusion in this thread.

In August/September we debated this one amongst our PRM team quite extensively. We came up with reasonable arguments on both sides and no clear consensus.

The arguments in favor of splitting between high and low hands were covered quite clearly here in the thread.

Those in favor of paying only the high hand pointed out that sometimes the eliminated player will not have had any qualifying low hand themselves. In such a case it is hard to argue that the person winning the low half of the pot has had anything to do with knocking the player out.

I am not completely comfortable with the idea of altering the payout of the bounty based on the strength/type of hand held by the knocked out player.

The current implementation is fair in that the rules are clear and the software implements them accurately. As there is an argument to support the current implementation, there is some significant support it, and there would be significant disruption and confusion caused by a change, it simply does not make sense to make the change at this point in time.

It is better for players and for the site if we focus our development efforts on items that are clearer, cleaner wins and/or that have a greater impact on the site.

It was an interesting topic and we enjoyed the discussion. In the end, as we find either choice defensible

I Don't know if this is the right thread but will there be any way for Pokertstars to fix thier software so that when we want to make a deal in the PKOs we can chop the bounties too.

I don't normally chop and have played out the 82pko fine but the other night i was tired and we wanted to chop the 27 and the admin told me to email stars as they don't do it.

The bounties can be substantial, the 27 we were playing for $500 and in the 82 i believe it was close to $3600 which most people i assume would want to chop.

Thanks, Pandick