Bounty Tournament Strategy

In a bounty tournament, part of every players buy-in goes towards the tournament prize pool, with the other part turning into a bounty on each player’s heads. Each players bounty is then awarded to the player who knocks them out. The bounty amount is often 50% of the buy-in, but this amount is different for different poker rooms and tournaments. For example, at Cake Poker 1/3 of the entry fee becomes the player’s bounty or in the Full Tilt Sunday Brawl only 17% of the buy-in is the bounty. There are a few changes that you should make to your game in order to benefit from the bounty tournament structure.

In this article we will look at trying to win bounties by isolating very short stacks with premium hands and trying to see as many flops as possible against short stacks with moderate hands. We will also touch on why it is easier to double up with a short stack in bounty tournaments and why you shouldn’t risk your stack just to go for a bounty.

One way to make money in bounty tournaments is taking players out of the tournament. This means that the hands when a player is all-in will play much different than in a normal tournament. In a normal tournament it is the norm to check down to the river if a player is all-in because there is no reason to raise unless you have a good hand, but in bounty tournaments it is important for you to be the one to take out the short stack so this changes the entire dynamic of all-in hands. If a player has a super short stack and the player is going to be forced all-in very soon, you should try to isolate them if you are lucky enough to get a premium hand. You want to eliminate other players from the hand in order to decrease your chance of losing the hand and the bounty. To isolate the player you have to make a big raise pre-flop in order to make the bet too big for other players to call.

If you just have a moderate hand when a player is a super short stack you should try your best to see the flop and hopefully make a strong hand. The short stack player will likely have to move all-in on the flop if they catch something and possibly even if they don’t so this is the perfect opportunity to win their bounty if you can hit the flop a little bit better. You want to see the flop as cheaply as possible with a moderate hand, but if you are raised you have to take into account the value of the bounty when deciding if the pot odds are right to call. This means you should call a little more than you normally would to account for the added value of the bounty.

Believe it or not, but the bounty tournament structure can actually be very beneficial to short stacks. Players are looking to win bounties and this means that if a short stack goes all-in they are more likely to be called. You can use this fact to your advantage by starting to move all in with premium hands when you have about 15 big blinds. You should play very tight when you are a short stack until you are down to about 6 big blinds, at which point you will have to start increasing your range.

The most common mistake that players make in bounty tournaments is risking too many chips to try for a bounty. You have to remember that there is still a very nice normal prize pool for getting far in the tournament and you should not be risking your tournament life just to try to win an extra bounty. Just adapt your strategy using the few suggestions mentioned above and you will win a lot of bounties, while still having a solid shot at winning the entire tournament.

Cake Poker is a US friendly poker site which makes depositing for American players easy. Cake offers players a selection of bounty tournaments in addition to “deep stack tournaments” and large guaranteed tournaments, such as the Cake Poker Weekly $100,000 Guaranteed Tournament.

Try The Bounty Tournaments At Cake Poker Today!