UPDATE ---- PKO General rules and Guidelines ---- UPDATE
We are planning on launching Beta test games very soon. If you have expressed an interest, you may want to know what gives in this new format.
Progressive Knockout Tournaments
Progressive Knockout Tournaments (PKO) are very similar to Bounty or Knockout (KO) tournaments in that they reward players for eliminating opponents from a tournament.
It is important to remember a Knockout only occurs when a player wins the last chip of an all-in opponent.
However, in a PKO, the players Bounties are usually a much higher percentage of the buy in than a regular Bounty.
For example, in a regular 100,000 play chip buy in with 30% Bounty the Bounty on every player is 28,500 play chips. 5,000 is taken for tournament fee and 66,500 goes into the prize pool. The Bounty on all the players is constant throughout the tournament and the eventual winner gets back their own Bounty too.
In a PKO, the Bounty could be 47,500 on each player from the beginning and 47,500 goes to the prize pool.
An important difference is that knocking out a player in a PKO does not earn you their full Bounty. A designated percentage is credited to the winning player, but the rest is added to the Bounty of the winning player. This means that as the tournament goes on, players bounties will grow every time they eliminate someone and become much more rewarding when they are in turn knocked out.
For example, where the PKO Bounty is set to 50/50,
In a 100,000 buy in, all players start with a Bounty of 47,500 and each puts 47,500 into the prize pool.
When the first player is knocked out, the player who eliminates them receives 23,750 prize (at the end of the tournament) and that players Bounty increases by 23,750 to 71,250. If they are knocked out before knocking anyone else out, their victor wins 35,625 in chips (half of their new Bounty), and that players Bounty in turn increases by 35,625, (no matter what it was before).
At the end of the tournament it is likely that some players will have relatively huge Bounties on their head, depending on how many eliminations they made.
Prize pool
There is an increasing prize structure, just like in regular tournaments, but in PKO the top 2 positions are the same amount, or very close in larger fields…
This is because the top 2 players battle it out to win the Bounty from the other, instead of getting another big increase in prize chips.
In a PKO MTT, the prize for 1st and 2nd will still be a haul of play chips, but the remaining two players will have the accumulated Bounties of all the other players on their heads to play for.
PKO Bounty Strategy
The standard PKO Bounty percentage is 50/50.
Half will go to the prize pool and half will go onto the players Bounty, but there may be games when the Bounty is set to be smaller, or bigger than 50%.
This means your strategy might vary, depending on whether you want to try and collect Bounties from the start, or if you want to wait for the other players Bounties to increase before you start taking chances.