Bounty tournaments are the same as regular tournaments, except for the fact that part of every players buy-in becomes a bounty on their head. If you knock someone out of the tournament you receive their bounty and the same thing goes that the person who knocks you out of the tournament gets your bounty. Of course if everything goes perfectly and you win the tournament, you get your own bounty back.
The majority of bounty tournaments have half of your buy-in go to the prize pool and half become the bounty, but this can be different at different rooms. For example at Carbon Poker half of the buy-in becomes the bounty, whereas at Cake Poker 1/3 is the bounty and at PKR it starts off as half of the buy-in, but when you knock someone out you only win part of their bounty and part of it is added to yours. Regardless of what structure the bounty tournament is, there are a few changes you should make to your strategy in order to increase your profits in these tournaments.
1. Knock out the very short stacks and win their bounties
When a player has very few chips it’s the perfect time to try to win their bounty without risking many of your chips. If the short stack player goes all in from early position or is forced all-in from the blinds his bounty is up for grabs. If you find yourself in the best position of having a strong hand when this happens you should try to isolate the short stack so that you are the only player with a chance at his bounty. You do this by raising the pot fairly high so it is not worth it to others to play the hand unless they actually do have a strong hand as well. You do not want players to get a free or cheap look and end up out drawing you and winning the bounty money. You should probably try to isolate if you have a big pair or a big ace, as long as you don’t put yourself in too much danger. A raise of maybe 5 or 6 times the big blind should be enough to keep the borderline hands out of the pot. You don’t need to push all-in over the top and risk your stack.
If you are in the more common position of having about an average hand when the short stack is all-in you should do your best to see a flop and try to hit something. If you have to call a raise you should take the bounty amount into account when calculating your pot odds. This means you should call a slightly higher raise than you normally would in order to try to hit something on the flop and take down the pot and the bounty. It is also important to remember that players will not be checking it down when there is a bounty in play, so just because someone bets after the flop doesn’t necessarily mean they have something good in this situation.
2. Double up through the big stacks
If you end up being short stacked bounty tournaments allow you a better opportunity to double up and get back into the tournament. Since players are looking to collect your bounty they will be much more likely to call your all-in bet with a worse hand than they would in a normal tournament. You should use this fact to your advantage by playing tight when you have the short stack and only pushing with very strong hands. You can even start pushing a little earlier than in most tournaments; around the 15 big blind range would be a good spot to start pushing with premium hands. Once you drop below 10 big blinds you should of course look for more opportunities to push and this may mean you have to push with a less than premium hand. It’s just important to remember that you are more likely to be called when you push all-in in a bounty tournament and if you use this to your advantage you can move from short stack back up to average very easily.
3. Don’t go out of your way to win a bounty
Bounties are nice to win, but a first place cut from the prize pool is much larger than anybody’s bounty. Your main goal in bounty tournaments should still be to win the tournament. It is good to try for bounties when the opportunity presents itself, but you shouldn’t go out of your way, risking too many chips to win your bounty. You should play the tournament similar to how you normally would play a tournament, with just the two minor adjustments listed above.