Do You Like Bounty Tournaments?

I guess this is going to be my first “real” post in awhile.  I returned from Vegas last week, and I’m still trying to figure out how to write up the posts I have in my mind from the trip—what is the best way to do them?  I mean, not only was the poker lousy for me, but I have to say, I have kind of soured on Las Vegas, as those of you who follow me on Twitter probably noticed.  I really wasn’t sorry to come home, and right now, I don’t feel any urgency at all in returning.  That is not because the poker was bad, it has more to do the Vegas itself.  Vegas is constantly changing and I don’t think what’s been changing is for the better—quite the contrary.  But I’ll get to that in the (near?) future.

When I got back home, I was a bit under the weather and thus ended up taking the weekend off (from blogging and pretty much everything else).  So that leaves me with precious little time to get a blog post ready for you good folks now. I don’t have time to go over my notes from the trip for a post, so I’m going to do something a bit different.  I’m going to talk about poker tournaments in a general sense. Specifically, bounty tournaments.

I’ve had the idea to talk about this running around on my brain for awhile, and I was recently reminded of it by Nick.  He was reviewing some of the upcoming summer poker tournaments and a $400 bounty tournament at Venetian caught his eye. He asked me if I had any idea what kind of turnout they’d get and how long the tournament might last.  I don’t think I was much help, but it did make me wonder—why a bounty tournament?

So let me throw the question open for discussion.  What do you all think of bounty tournaments?  Do you find them preferable to a regular tournament?  Less desireable?  Or does it make no difference to you?  And more importantly, why?

Bounty tournaments obviously have their fans (in addition to Nick).  They are a major part of a lot of series—a good percentage of Venetian’s evening events during the Deepstacks are bounty tournaments.  A lot of rooms have them on their regular schedules.  Most don’t have them daily, but they might replace their regular non-bounty tournament with a bounty version once or twice a week. 

They’re in the minority—most tournaments are not bounty tourneys.  So I guess they’re not quite as popular as regular ones.  So maybe some people just like them as a change of pace, to add some variety?  Yet I suspect there are some players who are “bounty hunters’—folks who prefer the bounty tourneys and play those almost exclusively.

So what is the actual the appeal of them?  Of course, I asked Nick and he pointed out the obvious—that if you knock a few players out, as you tend to do in a good tournament run—you get some of your buy-in back with the bounties.  Maybe you even knock out enough people so that you get all of your buy-in back, and maybe make a profit even if you don’t cash.  Right?

Well sure that’s possible.  To me though, that’s not worth the trade-off.  You’ve heard me bitch and moan over and over again about the payouts in tournaments, particularly the dreaded min-cash (here, for example). Well, those bounties just reduce the prize pool up and down the line, and/or reduce the number of people who actually cash.  So someone like me is not going to be happy with the pay scale of a bounty tournament, to be sure.  Of course you can make up the difference with the bounties you get, but that’s kind of hit-or-miss.

Or is it?  Because the next question I have is, does the fact that it’s a bounty tourney affect your style of play—and should it?  Are you more inclined to call a short stack’s all-in knowing if you bust him out, you get some money right then and there?  And is that really a good strategy?  If you are trying to win a tournament, why be distracted by something like that?  Your decision to call should be based on several factors, but should a $25—or even a $100—bounty, be one of them?  What if you call to get the bounty when you otherwise wouldn’t, and not only fail to knock the other play out, but cost yourself the chips you need to cash in the process?  Yes, of course, it could work the other way.  Maybe the bounty encouraged you to make the “right” call and helped you get chips, in addition to the bounty.  But to me, I don’t like having an outside factor affect my decision making.

What I really don’t get is when the bounties are small.  I mean, the one Nick was looking at has $100 bounties.  That’s certainly meaningful (but also means a very meaningful hit on the size of the overall prize pay outs).  But you see some bounty tournaments with really small bounties, and you have to wonder, what’s the point?  I guess I could be convinced that a $25 would be worthwhile, but once you get under that, I can’t see how it is even worth the effort to keep track of them. I guess that’s a knock on bounty tournaments—they create more work for the dealers and the players to keep track of.  And for a small bounty, it just doesn’t seem worth it.

I actually wrote a blog post about a bounty tournament I played at the Bike (see here).  It was a small tournament with $10 bounties and I honestly thought the bounties were just dumb.  I mean $10 bounties?  Absurd.  And I know there are actually really small tourneys around the country—say with $25/$30 buy-ins—that have $5 bounties!  That’s just nuts.  But then, I guess if you’re gonna play in a $25 tournament, you’re probably not much of a serious poker player anyway.

I seem to recall a few times last summer, when everyone had their big series going on, I was looking for a tournament to play and the only ones in my price range were bounty tournaments.  So I passed.  Frustrating.

And by the way...sometimes rooms run bounty tournaments where the bounties (which may be prizes, rather than cash) are funded by the room, not the prize pool.  Those are definitely worth playing, not at all what I'm talking about.

But maybe you guys have convincing arguments on the awesomeness of bounty tournaments.  Let me hear them.