Bounty tournaments, where you get paid to knock out other players, are getting more and more popular with online poker players. The top poker rooms are starting to offer this tournament format because players seem to love them. These tournaments are fun to play, and they require a different poker strategy than you would use in non bounty tournaments. I’d like to suggest a few tips that will make you money in bounty tournaments.

For the purposes of this article, I’ll use a 27 player bounty tournament with a $10+1 buy-in and where bounty prize pool is %50 of the buy-in fee. In this case, this means that each player is worth $5 in bounty and the remaining $5 of your buy-in goes towards the position prize pool.

What this means is that the prize pool is going to be half the size of a similar non bounty tournament, and more importantly you can recover your buy-in by eliminating two players. This opens up a world of possibility because you can make money by eliminating players and by finishing in a prize paying position.

This leaves you with two primary strategies:

1 – Go for a lot of bounties and knock out as many players as you can. Remember, you only need to eliminate three opponents out of 27 to actually make a profit in this scenario. You can make a lot more money by eliminating more players, but this means you’ll take greater risks. You’ll need to push people all-in, and you’ll need to put your own chips on the line frequently. It only takes one bad beat or one bad real to loose your shirt here, so your reading skills must be sharp.

2 – Go for position money, with a couple of bounties. This means you’ll play tight, let others battle it out, and only target small stacks. This downside here is that if you do make it to a paying position, you probably won’t last very too long because you’ll probably be a short stack by that time. Being a short stack in bounty tournaments isn’t a good position at all, especially when the blinds get expensive. Opponents will really put you under pressure. They want you out, and they have the chips to make it happen!

The upside is that when you do decide to go all in, you will be taken seriously because of your tight player image. This lets you make some key bluffs to try and increase your chip stack so that you can last a little longer, but choose your timing and who you want to bluff wisely. One mistake on your part and you’re done. The other benefit is that it should be fairly easy to double up when you have good cards. There is a point when big stack will put you all in with virtually anything, and many players get impatient towards ¾ of the tournament. If someone puts you all in when you have a good hand, you’ll have a great chance at doubling up. Ultimately, you don’t want to go just for positions here, you also want to take out the small stacks when you can and earn income from bounties as well as position.

Personally, I prefer the first option. Besides, it is much more satisfying to send people home! Try to build a large stack early on, because the more chips you have, the better equipped you are to eliminate other players. And remember that top 3 positions aren’t that important when you have a lot of bounties under your belt. You’re better off finishing in 10th place with 5 bounties than in second place with no bounties.

Remember to target the small stacks. Don’t be the guy who brings a player down from $1000 to $100 in chips. Be the guy who finishes him off when he’s bleeding! You get paid for taking the last $100, not the first $900. Remember that.

Theoretically, if you manage to eliminate a lot of players, you’re probably increasing your chip stack anyway which means you’ll probably end up in paying positions as well. So my advice is simple: Don’t focus on positions at all, focus on eliminating opponents and acquiring chips early on. If you pull that off, you’ll be very successful in bounty tournaments.

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Submitted by MyPokerBasics.com – Learn how to play poker games!