Bounty Tournaments (KO and PKO)

Run a knockout or progressive knockout tournament: what the bounty costs, who collects it, split pots, rebuys, and where bounty money shows up.

In a bounty tournament every player carries a bounty, and whoever knocks them out collects it. The Club House supports the two common kinds: a regular knockout (KO) and a progressive knockout (PKO).

Bounty tournaments are a Premium feature, judged by the club owner's plan. A bounty tournament set up on Premium plays out on any plan.

The entry is buy-in plus bounty

A bounty is paid on top of the buy-in. A tournament with a $40 buy-in and a $10 bounty is a $50 entry: the $40 goes into the prize pool and pays the places as usual, and the $10 is the bounty. Bounties never change the prize pool, the payouts or league points. Everywhere the buy-in is shown, it reads as "$40 + $10 bounty".

Set it up

Open the tournament and go to Payouts.
Under Bounties, choose Knockout (KO) or Progressive KO.
Enter the bounty per entry. For a PKO, set the cash share (50% unless your room plays it differently).

The page shows a worked example with your own numbers, so you can check what a knockout will pay before the game starts.

Knockout (KO)

Whoever knocks a player out takes that player's whole bounty in cash. Bounties never grow: with a $10 bounty, every knockout pays $10.

Progressive KO (PKO)

Whoever knocks a player out takes the cash share of their bounty, and the rest is added to their own bounty. Knock out a $10 bounty at 50% and you win $5 now, and your own bounty grows from $10 to $15. The players who keep winning become the biggest targets.

House rules

Each entry and each rebuy buys a fresh bounty. Add-ons buy none.
When a player busts and rebuys, choose what happens under When a player busts and rebuys. Knocker collects (the default, as in online re-entry tournaments): whoever busted them collects it as for any knockout, and the rebuy starts a fresh bounty. Stays on their head: nothing is paid, the rebuy adds a fresh bounty to the one they carry, and both go to whoever knocks them out for good. When you record the rebuy, name who busted them; a rebuy with nobody named (a top-up) just adds a bounty to their head. Under either rule, whoever you name is credited a knockout in a league formula that uses ka.
When a split pot knocks a player out, choose Split pot: add a knocker in the elimination dialog and pick every player who shared it. The bounty is split evenly between them.
With payout rounding on, bounty shares are rounded to the payout rounding step; otherwise they are worked out to the cent. Rounding never loses money: what is rounded off one part goes to the other.
The winner collects their own bounty at the end.
Every elimination names who knocked the player out. A player who leaves, is blinded out or disqualified has no knocker: choose No knocker and their bounty goes to the prize pool. If you set a knocker later in the player's details, the bounty moves to them.

During the game

The elimination dialog shows what the knockout will pay before you confirm it, for example "Ana wins $5 · bounty now $15". The players list has a Bounty column with the bounty on every player still in. On the clock and on a TV, each knockout that pays a bounty shows who busted whom and what it paid. The Biggest bounties widget ranks the players worth the most to knock out, and the players widget shows each player's bounty; a bounty tournament's clock shows both unless you change its layout. Undoing an elimination from the action log, or reinstating the player, takes its bounty back.

Results and stats

Results show the bounty each player won, and a player's prize includes it. League stats and player profiles count bounty winnings as earnings and the bounties bought as spending, so profit and ROI stay honest. Finishing in the money still means a place prize: bounty cash alone is not a cash.