PokerStars has yet another poker tournament series starting today. It’s not a gigantic one like the recently-ended 2015 World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP), but it certainly looks like fun. During Knockout Week, PokerStars is hosting 35 tournaments, all Knockout, Super Knockout, and Progressive Super Knockout varieties. The tournaments start Monday and run through Sunday, October 18th.
These knockout events play like regular poker tournaments except that a portion of the buy-in goes toward a bounty that is placed on every player’s head. When a player is eliminated, the person who did the deed wins the bounty. Thus, it is entirely possible to make a profit in a knockout tournament without actually making the money (though at the same time, if you bust enough players to make up your buy-in, there’s a good chance you will accumulate enough chips to cash normally).
Buy-ins for the various events range from $11 to $1,050. The $215, $500,000 guaranteed prize pool Six-Max, Progressive Super Knockout Main Event is scheduled for October 18th at 12:30pm ET.
As is typically the case for PokerStars tourney series, there are extra incentives for playing, aside from the wealth of guaranteed prize pools. The Knockout Week Challenges allow players to win some bonus money for eliminating their competition. Each day, anyone who knocks out two players in a Knockout Week tournament will win a random reward from $1 to $1,000. Additionally, over the course of a week, anyone who busts two players on the same hand in a Knockout Week event will win anywhere from $5 to $5,000. Here is how the prize probabilities break down:
Daily Challenge Reward (knock out two players in a day)
$1,000 – 0.05%
$100 – 1.00%
$25 – 4.00%
$10 – 10.00%
$5 – 20.00%
$1 – 64.95%
Week-long Challenge Reward (knock out two players in a single hand at some point during the week)
$5,000 – 0.15%
$500 – 0.50%
$100 – 2.50%
$50 – 5.00%
$25 – 10.00%
$5 – 81.85%
And, of course, there is a Knockout Week Leader Board. Rather than earning points based on order of finish in the tournaments, though, players earn points based on the number of bounties they snatch during the events. To get onto the leader board, a player must knock out two players (at any time). After that, more eliminations means more points.
Then, rather than just winning money as usual, everybody on the leader board will get a seat in $10,000 freeroll to take place on Sunday, October 25th. Everyone will start with at least 3,000 chips, but the players in the top 1,000 will be rewarded with larger starting stacks. The overall leader will begin the freeroll with 15,000 chips. On top of that, the top 1,000 players will also have bounties on their heads, again determined by where they finish on the leader board. The minimum bounty is $1, going all the way up to $100 for the leader.