All thanks to the poker software
Out with the old, in with the new. The World Series of Poker has replaced Event #4 on its WSOP Online schedule for Michigan and Pennsylvania, switching from a $400 Progressive Knockout bracelet event to a $500 Mystery Bounty tournament.
Just like progressive knockout tournaments were all the rage years ago, so, too are mystery bounty events today. But why won’t Nevada and New Jersey get the mystery bounty events? Because in those two states, WSOP.com still runs 888’s old software. In Michigan and Pennsylvania, it uses 888’s “Poker 8” platform, which has the ability to run mystery bounties, unlike the older version.
And the mystery bounty event was not on the original WSOP Online schedule because WSOP.com was still testing the format in both states at the time, so it didn’t want to promise something that it could not guarantee it would deliver at that point.
The first-ever mystery bounty online bracelet event for US players will run on June 25 at 6:30pm ET in both states. Each state has their own tournament, as their player pools are still separate. The $500 tournament ($450 + $50) has a $100,000 guaranteed prize pool (the event also allows for three re-buys per person).
Get aggressive
For the uninitiated, there are two distinct prize pools in a mystery bounty tournament, both derived from the player buy-ins: the regular prize pool and the bounty prize pool. The regular prize pool is just that, the cash payments that go to players based on the order of finish. The bounty prize pool is split up with a price going on each players head…when they get to the bounty phase, that is.
The first phase of the WSOP Online Mystery Bounty event goes through Level 17 (levels are 15 minutes long). Here, the tournament plays as normal, nothing different than any other tournament.
The second phase, beginning at Level 18, is where the bounties come into play. Here, every player that remains has a bounty on their head. But unlike in a progressive knockout event, where you can see the price on each player, nobody knows anyone’s bounty (hence, the “mystery”). When a player is eliminated from Level 18 and beyond, the person who eliminates them receives a random bounty award from a pool of possible dollar amounts.
For this tournament, the top bounty prize is $20,000, which will go to one lucky player. There are two $5,000 bounties, ten $1,000 bounties, and then a total of $10,000 divided among all the other possible bounties.
Both Michigan and Pennsylvania have seven online bracelet events, held once a week from June 4 through July 16.