When playing a knockout tournament I simply feel the bounty you receive for knocking an opponent out is just way to small. When playing a knockout tournament I want the bounty on other players heads to factor into the decision making I make with every hand, it is this change in strategy and style which makes these knockout tournaments a breath of fresh air in comparison to your average MTT or SnG. As it currently stands the bounties on players heads are so small in comparison to the payout when u make the money, that play is hardly altered if at all. I suggest if we divide the prize pool up, half to each players bounty and the other half to the payouts, this will create bounties large enough to significantly alter the approach most players take to their average MTT.
An Example of the how the prizes would be laid out is in say the 10,000 bounty hunter, 4250 chips would be added to each player as a bounty, and 4250 chips would be added to the prize pool. (500 chip rake) If the number of players that would make the money be reduced by this, i feel that is fine due to the fact that players would acquire considerable sums of chips via knockouts.
A good showing of how this mixes up gameplay and creates a new fun environment is the idea of making the money the first couple of hands. Usually in a MTT you must grind through multiple levels in the hope of finally reaching the money, but with these large bounties on players heads you can theoretically make the money in the first couple of hands! simply two knockouts is all it would take to pay for your buy in! This would drastically change how the tournament would play out when the common style of survival becomes less optimal then attempting to go bounty hunting. This would make low blind play a much different experience and frankly, more interesting and exciting.
I understand the argument that some would make saying that this structure for a tournament would encourage “bingo” play but i would like to suggest that it would do just the opposite. The main problem when encountering every hand all-in players is that players would say to themselves, “I’m not risking my tournament life to pick this guy off let someone else do it” and when someone finally musters the courage to call they are only rewarded with a double up, which is less equity then you might think. This format rewards players for their courage with a substantial knockout bounty as well as a double up, this added benefit would allow players to loosen up their calling requirements and feel more confident in trying to pick off bingo players. I’m not saying that there will not be a very aggressive strategy, but those bingo players everyone seems to hate wont be around very long to gamble!
The programming for this type of format should be fairly easy to implement since i believe the devs only have to change the payout distributions and not program anything new. So i hope some members of the community will read this and try to support this idea because i really do think this small addition will change the game for the better in a big way. please feel free to criticize this idea and provide feedback. If you actually took the time to read this whole thing thank you.