We have a weekly tournament in our club. Our rules are pretty simple: It's a $20 entry, which gets you t10,000 in chips (100BB). If you bust-out before the break, you can rebuy (t10,000 for $20), and if you last till the break, you can add-on (+t10,000 for $20), but you can't do both.

So far, this has been working well. However, we want to shake things up and do a tournament with bounties in two weeks. (First Friday of the month, we experiment.)

The bounty would be $5 per player, so an entry of $20+5. Simple enough in a freeze out, but with a fixed rebuy, how can we do this fairly?

Here's my thoughts:

$20+5 Buy-in (t10,000 + Bounty)
$20+5 Rebuy (t10,000 + Bounty)
$20 add-on. (t10,000)

Does this work? It was also suggested that players only have the bounty on the first bust out, but this didn't seem fair, as it's just as difficult to bust a player the second time around as the first - and it doesn't seem fair to the bustee.

Additionally, $5 is a BIG bounty compared to the buy-in, and we're only going to have about 15 players. Is it too big, or should we knock it down to $20+$2.50?

What's your thoughts?

I've been thinking about putting together an "ultimate bounty" tourney after listening to a ante up pod cast. The idea they were exploring was your buy-in IS your bounty (so in your case, when you knock out an opponent, you get their full $25 buy in). This seems pretty crazy extreme, and wouldn't encourage outlasting other opponents to win the tourney. Though it sounds interesting to me.

I would break it down like this: $15 is your bounty, while only $10 goes toward the tourney, with pay-outs to 3-4 players. I think this would encourage players not only to knock out the competition, but play to win the tourney.

I really like the idea of a bounty tourney, it just sounds fun to me, and would bring out strategies you wouldn't usually see in a normal cash or tourney play.

OH! but re-buys, that's tough. In a re-buy scenario, I would say re-buys would have to be the full $25 amount, which includes another bounty on their head. Just makes sense to me.

If it is one re-buy max. just have the re-buy include the bounty, so $20.00 + $5.00 = T10k + bounty chip. Alternatively, the bounty only gets awarded when the player busts out. So, if they bust during the re-buy period, and do NOT re-buy, they give up their bounty. If they re-buy, they keep it, as they were not busted out of the tournament at that point.

Huh? I would think that no matter when you bust: a bounty a player has won is theirs, whether they decide to re-buy or not. In addition, you can only lose your own bounty (by getting busted). The bounties you have won by knocking out other players are completely yours, and are separate from your playing chips.

I would just say that a $25 re-buy includes a new bounty for the player.

I haven't played a bounty tourney, but this is what I would expect I'd guess.

Woops, my bad, I didn't read close enough, sorry. I don't really like the alternative scenario here though. Re-buys that include a new bounty make much more sense to me.

I think the main concern is how much should the bounty factor into the tourney. I think $2.50 per bounty is tiny, $5 is even too small. There's no real extra incentive to bust somebody, because your winning pocket change for a bounty. If your not willing to either up the buy-in or make the bounty a bigger % of the buy in, I'd say stick with your normal tourney.

Keep us posted though, I'd love to hear how it turns out.

The final bustout. Only one bounty per person per tourney. Buyin is $25, rebuy/addon is $20. If a player opts not to rebuy, then the bounty is awarded. But if the player rebuys, the bounty is still on.

Remember this situation, because it will come up eventually:

Player A is short stack, and is all-in.

Player B is middle stack, and is all-in.

Player C has them both covered.

Player A wins the main pot, Player C wins the side pot. Player B is busted.

Who gets the bounty? It might seem obvious to some, but many have a hard time with it.

I do not like the one bounty per person rule. The whole point of a bounty is a player gets a bounty for taking another player out. With the one bounty per person rule I may or may not get a bounty for taking you out.

I would put the bounty on the buy-in not the player. If a player chooses to rebuy then the other players have the ability to earn another bounty.

No bounty on the add-on.

I have run bounty tournaments in the past and the players like them. These were $20+$5 buy-in/bounty which encourages more play.

Good luck.

various options are going to "feel" right to different people, but there's no real procedural/mathematical problem with any of these options:

-- every buyin includes a bounty, and every felting earns a bounty

-- the first buyin includes a bounty, and the first time someone is felted the bounty is awarded. rebuys come with no bounty, and refeltings earn no bounty.

-- the first buyin includes a bounty, and only a complete elimination earns a bounty. If a player is felted and rebuys, no bounty paid

-- any of those can be executed with optional bounties. Players can decide individually whether to participate, even on a per-rebuy basis. You can't earn a bounty unless you've purchased one for the buyin you're playing.

Give a bounty chip to every player who buys a bounty, and all this will be clear to your players. Once there's a physical indicator of your bounty status, it's intuitive to everyone.

Problems with optional or first bust bounty chips:

There's no way to tell the difference between a bounty chip won, and a chip not yet given away.

Agree with pfapfap.

One bounty chip per player. In a rebuy, losing your stack doesn't mean you have busted the tournament if you can buy back in. Once a player busts for good (either they are out of rebuys or decline the option to rebuy) then their bounty is given.

isn't the bounty usually around 25% of the total buyin?

We did ours (called it the KO Tournament — our Bounty Tournament has bonuses for knocking out specific players rather than just anyone) with a buy-in at A, with a mandatory bounty payment of ½ the size of A.

Buy in gets you T1500 chips. "Rebuys" (for price A) available at T299 or lower chips. If you're at zero chips and rebuy, then you're obligated to pay A + ½A again. Strategize accordingly.

KOs paid in cash on the spot. More green on the table made for a more festive atmosphere. The goal was to spread around the cash more than our typical 50/30/20% SNG payout (which was how we distributed all the buy-ins, and the last person standing got their own KO buy-in back as well, along with the KO payment for knocking out 2nd place).

It's all arbitrary. I had thought of allowing rebuys without forcing the payment of the KO portion, which would then make you ineligible for collecting KO money from someone you subsequently bust out, but making that obvious on the table was more of a nightmare than I cared for. As it was I just ran the tournament with our standard SNG buy-in pricing and with the additional KO element it became a +50% higher-priced weekend for folks (advertised as such up front, of course).

Zero complaints as to how it was run. As a host it was hard to judge efficacy as a single individual (and a long-term donator to the game!) had 8 KOs in a very improbable slaughter of the rest of the table. He was quite happy with the payout structure.

There are two ways to solve this problem.

The first way is to make bounties (at buy-in and on rebuys) mandatory. Then you ensure that every player has at least one purchased bounty chip in front of them, and that chip will be lost when they get felted.

Another way is to only require that a player must have a bounty chip to win a bounty chip; it doesn't matter if you bought it or won it. So I can buy in, win a couple of bounties, bust out, then rebuy without purchasing another bounty chip. I can still win more bounties, but if I bust again I have to give up one of the bounties I won.

And this is a third way - pay off the bounty immediately and take the chip off the table.

In our bounty tournies, when someone busts you you give up your bounty. If you re-buy there is a fresh bounty on your head.

It never even crossed my mind that you could do it some other way, so I'm a little confused by this thread. I'm also slightly apprehensive because I'm not sure if pfap has ever been wrong before.

So, what's my argument against 'you don't win their bounty if they re-buy'.

1) If you stack someone, you win the bounty, it obvious. OK thats not an argument at all. Or if it is, it's a circular one.

1b) How do you make your decisions when you don't know what your opponents stack is? OK, so I suppose this could be called a preference. But I'm thinking there is something fundamental about knowing what you are playing for in a hand.

estimate chance that opponent rebuys, and factor that in. In most rebuy tournaments, rebuying is virtually automatic, except for a few people who everyone knows are going home. I don't think it's a huge ambiguity.

If the bounty is relatively small, it probably doesn't factor into your decision all that much. You're not raising or calling any different because of the bounty very often.

Do I not remember playing an optional-bounty tournament in your garage?

Are you talking about the specific combination of optional rebuy WITH first-felting payment? I think shcmendrick addressed that fine. If you gather a few bounties, then bust out and rebuy without paying a new bounty, yes you have bounty chips and can therefore collect more without technically buying that right. But if you had instead cashed out those bounty chips and used one of those to buy a new one, it all comes out the same.

Have you seen some problems with optional bounties that I'm not aware of?

I think it's just easier to make bounties mandatory for the rebuy, and the rebuy only after a bust-out.

Yes, making it mandatory does remove the problems associated with making it optional. I hadn't thought of that.

Interesting...

But let's say you break a table, and Billy is short stacked. He pockets his bounty chips on the move, gets busted by someone at the new table, and says "well, no bounties left in my stack!" Goes to get a drink, watches the action, then before leaving, he asks the TD to cash out his bounties.

Well, weinerbucket, you actually said...

My solution was simply to remove the optional part.

Well, there probably needs to be a house rule that all bounty chips stay on the table until you exit the tourney for good. Then if Billy does it (and he probably won't be hard to catch), he gets a KITN and removed from the invite list just like any other cheater.

I feel like you missed the post above mine. I was merely responding to that.

So now as a TD of a home game I have to keep track of the path the bounty chips took from when I passed them out to when I receive them? No thanks. Conditional chip values are very difficult to monitor. If you want to try it, go ahead, but I don't think you'll enjoy the micromanaging hassle.

I feel like you are a weinerbucket, and we are rapidly moving toward violent agreement.

As a TD in this situation, I'm not going to sweat it too much. This kind of thing is high-risk and low-reward, and I'm counting on most players to understand that.

My tourneys typically have a sign-out sheet for tracking results. While I rarely run bounty tourneys (and have never run a bounty with rebuys), if a player signed out, then cashed out bounty chips an hour later, it would raise my eyebrows - particularly if it happened more than once. From there it's not hard to find out who busted him and whether that player got a bounty chip or not.

So Billy is risking a permanent ban from the game for an extra $5 bounty? Like I said: it's high-risk low-reward behavior.

I guess I don't understand your proposed system, then. Why would your eyebrows be raised?

To the new table, he didn't have any bounty chips when he sat down.

To you, off having a beer or managing the cash game or doing any of a zillion host duties, he had won a couple of bounty chips when he signed the sheet.

Nobody has any reason to suspect anything.

Sure, I see what you're saying. I guess I'm used to smaller tourneys (typically 1-2 tables) where it's much easier to notice this type of thing when it happens. But still I think it's an edge case with risks that (IMO) drastically outweigh the benefits.

First, I've already mentioned the risk of getting caught by an observant TD or player. On top of that, what if Billy catches some cards and gets back into the game? Now he's really at risk of getting caught. If he busts someone, he can't collect their bounty, because someone at the table has certainly noticed that he doesn't have a bounty chip. And how believable will it be when he says, "Oh yeah, I forgot about these bounty chips in my pocket!"? So now he's lost the ability to win future bounties and he can't even cash the ones he's already got without arousing suspicion.

Again, it seems like a lot of risk to save a $5 bounty.

It's a weird system, regardless.