Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Full Tilt Poker Knockout (Bounty) Tournaments

Among the many types of online poker tournaments hosted by Full Tilt Poker, the ones that are growing at the fastest rate in popularity are Knockout Tournaments. In these tournaments, a portion of each player’s buy-in goes to the Knockout Bounty on his head. Every time you are able to knock a player out of the tournament, you are awarded that player’s Knockout Bounty.

These tournaments can greatly change a player’s expected profit in a tournament. With a normal tournament, there is a high variation in your daily profits because of the nature of the tournament’s payout structure.

The best tournament players in the world can only expect to finish in the money 25%-30% of the time. Even if a player is fortunate enough to eliminate several opponents from the tournament and play for hours without losing a hand, it is still possible for that player to be eliminated from the tournament without making the money bubble.

Full Tilt Poker's Knockout tournaments allow players to eliminate some of the negative swings that have always been a part of tournament poker. It is common for a player who is knocked out early in the tournament to still recoup some of their buy-in before they are eliminated. Even if you are knocked out of the tournament prior to making the money bubble, you can take a substantial profit with you.

A great example of Knockout tournaments at Full Tilt Poker would be the weekly Sunday Brawl, played every weekend at 2:00 p.m. ET for a guaranteed prize pool of at least $250,000. The buy-in is $240 + $16. $200 of each player’s buy-in goes to the prize pool. Another $40 is the Knockout Bounty on that player’s head. The remaining $16 is of course the tournament fee.

By this tournament structure, any player who can knock out 7 players, worth $280, before being eliminated will have won back their entire buy-in and fee, plus take home a small profit. With an average of between 1,500 and 2,000 players entering the Full Tilt Poker Sunday Brawl each week, players with absolutely any skill at all should have no trouble accomplishing this feat. In addition, averaging that many participants often raises the guaranteed prize pool well above $250k!

Full Tilt Poker is also host to some other great tournament structures including Shootout tournaments, Freeroll tournaments and a vast array of satellites into the world’s largest poker events (WSOP, WTP, EPT, WSOPE, Aussie Millions, etc).

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