An article about PokerStars usually means one thing: another online tournament series. And sure enough, this is one of those times that fits into the “usually” category. PokerStars has released the schedule for its next big tournament series, the Bounty Builder Turbo Series, slated to run May 23 through June 6.
The Bounty Builder Turbo Series will feature 184 tournaments and $25 million guaranteed prize pools across the two weeks. Every event is a Progressive Knockout (PKO) tourney, and they are all at least Turbo format, with 45 being Hyper Turbos.
In Progressive Knockout event, part of the prize pool goes toward a bounty on each player’s head. That’s normal – we have all seen bounty events before. But where PKOs differ from a normal bounty tournament is that players do not win an opponent’s entire bounty when they knock them out. Instead, they get half the bounty in cash and the other half is added to their own bounty.
For example, in a recent $33 PKO tournament on PokerStars, $15 went to the regular prize pool, $15 went to the bounty prize pool, and $3 went to the house. If Player A eliminated Player B, Player A would receive $7.50 cash in their account immediately, while $7.50 would be added to their bounty, making their new bounty $22.50.
What this setup does is two things: a) it tends to make players more aggressive, as there is an added reward (literally) for taking risks, and b) allows players to earn a profit even if they don’t crack the money bubble.
For players like me – the passive, nitty, afraid to commit more than one chip at a time type – progressive knockout tournaments aren’t the best. They are fun, but not really the format that suits our limited abilities. For those who like action, they are a blast. Go on an early run, and you can be freerolling the rest of the tournament.
The Bounty Builder Turbo Series has buy-ins for everyone, ranging from $5.50 to $5,200. It is especially affordable for those with shallower pockets; 51 events have buy-ins of $22 or less.
The two Main Events are right in the middle of the Series. The low buy-in is $55 with a $1 million guaranteed prize pool and the high buy-in $530 with a $2 million guaranteed prize pool.
The Sunday Million, the Sunday Storm, and the Sunday High Roller all have special editions.
The Bounty Builder Turbo Series comes hot off the heels of the SCOOP Afterparty, which just ended on Tuesday. The cooldown from the always popular Spring Championship of Online Poker featured 180 tournaments (60 events with three buy-in tiers each) and $2.5 million in guaranteed prize money for the three Main Events combined.