Bounty
Cash paid for knocking a player out, funded by splitting each buy-in. It changes calling maths — the money is attached to a person, not a pot.
In a bounty tournament, part of every buy-in is set aside as a price on that player's head. Eliminate them and it is yours, paid immediately and separately from the prize pool. A hundred-dollar event might send fifty to the prize pool and fifty to the bounty; knock out three players and you have already recovered your entry.
What that does to the maths is worth being precise about. The bounty is dead money, like an ante, but attached to a person rather than to the pot — and it is only collectable by a player who covers them. So when a short stack shoves and you have them covered, the pot is effectively larger than it looks, and hands you would normally fold become calls. When the shove comes from someone who covers you, the bounty is irrelevant to your decision, because you cannot win it.
There are three common shapes. Classic bounties are a fixed sum paid in full to the knocker. Progressive knockouts split each bounty, half in cash and half onto your own head. Mystery bounties conceal the amounts until the elimination, with a small number of very large prizes hidden in the pool — which makes every knockout a lottery ticket rather than a known payout.
The error is valuing bounties as if they were pure profit. They come out of the prize pool, so a bounty event pays less at the top than a freezeout with the same buy-in, and playing loose to farm bounties trades away real tournament equity for money you were partly paying yourself.
FAQ
What is a bounty in poker?
A cash prize awarded for eliminating a specific player, funded by splitting each entry between the prize pool and that player's head. It is paid immediately on the knockout, separately from where you eventually finish in the tournament.
How does a bounty change your calling range?
It widens it against players you cover, because their bounty behaves like dead money added to the pot. Against a stack that covers you the bounty changes nothing, since you cannot eliminate them and therefore cannot collect it.
What is a mystery bounty tournament?
A bounty event where the amounts are hidden until a knockout is made and drawn from a pool that contains a few very large prizes. Every elimination is worth the average bounty in expectation, but the individual result is a lottery.