Bounty
A bounty is a less used, but still quite popular feature that is prevalent in many poker tournaments around the world. The idea is to reward a player who eliminates another from the game. There are a few variations to this too with some tournaments carrying a rule that players get rewards only if they eliminate a specific player while others have a bounty for any player who is eliminated.
The reward for players on live or online tournaments is almost always in the form of a cash award rather than any chips or tournament currency. Despite being rare in professional tournaments, they have been known to occur at times even in professional tournaments. Bounties are more common in charitable tournaments as well as in local level events.
To enter a bounty tournament, the buy-in structure may vary and at times, it requires each player to pay their own bounty chip or token amount in addition to the normal buy-in. The bounty chip is carried by the player until and unless s/he is eliminated. Upon elimination, the chip is handed over to the person who eliminated them.
At the end of the tournament, each player can cash in all the bounty chips that they have won. The amount is equal to what each player paid for her/his bounty chip. The winner of the tournament is also allowed to cash in their own bounty chip at the end.
In some tournaments, only some players may have a bounty on their heads however this is decided before the tournament starts and is rarely ever random. The players with bounties have pre-arrangements with the organizing committees as a random allocation of the bounty rule will just make things difficult for the unprepared players.
A celebrity bounty is also a common feature for many tournaments, especially those related to charitable causes. If a celebrity host has been roped in to play a tournament, then a bounty is placed on her/his head as a way of promoting the tournament if nothing else.
Playing style and patterns change a lot in a game especially when a low-stack bounty player decides to go all-in. Other players may be tempted to go in and call a bet, which they wouldn’t normally have, and thus steer away from their natural poker game. It is always advisable to stick to the original way of playing especially if someone is entering a bounty tournament.
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