I'll Take a Bounty for Charity (or Any Other Time)

One of the most worthwhile things I do as a professional poker player is enter charity tournaments. Those events are really win-wins for me. If I lose, I don't really lose, I just give money to charity. And if I happen to win something for myself at a charity tournament, so much the better.



I recently played a charity tournament for the Multiple Sclerosis Society (details can be found at http://www.mscharitypoker.com/). I was the resident poker pro for this event, and as such, I had a bounty placed on my head. Whoever busted me would receive a framed FullTiltPoker jersey signed by one of the FullTilt pros.



I didn't know about this bounty before arriving for the tournament, but when I learned of it, I didn't mind at all. In fact, I was happy to have a bounty on my head, and not just so that I could have an excuse when I busted out. Having a bounty on me actually makes it easier for me to win the tournament.



First, let me give a little circumstantial evidence for what might seem like a counterintuitive claim. As some readers probably know, FullTilt puts cash bounties on all of the pros who play in their tournaments, and the bounties are equal to the buy-in of the event. (I have a T-shirt, mailed to me after a FullTilt tournament, that reads, "I busted Rafe Furst." I find this amusing.) But observers will notice that FullTilt pros have had little trouble winning their own tournaments. The most recent example came during the first event of the FullTilt Online Poker Series, when FullTilt pro Roland De Wolfe won, and Howard Lederer, another pro carrying a bounty, finished third. There are plenty of other examples if one wants to do research.



But a reasonable person could argue that the pros in the FullTilt tournaments are excellent players, and would actually win even more often if they didn't have bounties. So, instead of trying to gather evidence from FullTilt's online events, let's actually think about what kind of impact a bounty would have on a player's expected value (EV).



A simple way to look at it is, when you don't have a bounty, your opponents try to play their best game against you. When you do have a bounty, they alter their strategy. So, they must be playing something other than their best game. Let me try to explain my thinking a little more.



One common claim is that it's tougher to win a tournament with a bounty on your head, because the other players try harder to knock you out. This is half true, at best. While players will try harder to knock you out, that doesn't necessarily mean they'll succeed more often. In fact, you'll be almost assured of getting your chips in with bigger advantages than you would've had without a bounty. That's because, by definition, your opponents will be engaging you with worse hands than they ordinarily would.

This is a good thing, not a bad thing.



There is another aspect to the bounty that is helpful, which is that each of your opponents wants the bounty for himself. In some situations in which you would ordinarily find yourself facing two or three opponents, you'll end up facing only one. This, of course, increases your chance of winning the pot, and decreases your chance of busting out.



I know that some of you still may not be convinced, so let me relate some of the hands I played in the MS charity tournament, in which I carried a bounty on my head throughout. Having lost a coin-flip hand, I found myself down to just two big blinds. The under-the-gun player, a guy named Chuck Petruccione, limped in, and I shoved my miniscule stack in the pot with A-9 offsuit. Two other players called. But when the action returned to Chuck, he made a very large reraise. Everyone else folded, and I was heads up. Chuck rolled over … J-8 offsuit! I'd been chatting with him for most of the tournament, and he seemed like a pretty good player, so I was momentarily puzzled. "I just wanted the bounty," Chuck said. Ahhhhh. Instead of having to beat three opponents to quintuple my stack (there were dead blinds and antes), I had to beat only one – and I still had the chance to quintuple my stack. Chuck later told me that he played the hand in the first place only because he hoped that I would move in, and that he would have a shot at my bounty. "This was one of the few opportunities in my life to collect a prize as nice as the framed, autographed Clonie Gowen FullTilt jersey," Chuck later told me via e-mail. Considering the value the bounty held for him, Chuck's play in this hand was excellent.



I won the hand, and my stack of two big blinds suddenly became a stack of 10 big blinds. On the very next hand, I was dealt A-Q under the gun. Ten big blinds is still a pretty short stack, and I think I had a pretty easy all in, especially with antes in the pot. So, I moved in, and everyone folded around to Chuck in the big blind. He turned his hand faceup, and it was Q-7 offsuit. He knew his hand was no good, but he gritted his teeth and shoved his chips into the pot. "I have bad news for you," I said. "I have a queen."



"That's OK," he said. Did I want Chuck to call with his Q-7? Of course! My range of hands in that situation smashes Q-7 offsuit to pieces, and I welcome that call. Would Chuck even have considered calling if I wasn't a bounty? Of course not! But given the value he placed on my bounty, it was a very good call on his part. Are you starting to see why I like it when someone puts a bounty on me?



Naturally, a 7 came on the turn, and I was eliminated from the tournament. This would lead a lot of people to conclude that the bounty was a big disadvantage for me, since it caused a player who ordinarily would have folded to call and bust me. But it's important to remember that I might have busted out even earlier if I hadn't been the bounty. And, results aside, having an opponent limp-reraise with J-8 offsuit and later call my under-the-gun all in with Q-7 offsuit were enormously good for me in terms of EV.



As long as someone else is putting it up, I'm happy when there's a bounty on me in pretty much any tournament. In fact, maybe I should start putting a $100 bounty on myself in big buy-in events. Of course, that would probably be little incentive for my opponents to change strategy, and therefore would be akin to lighting $100 on fire.



So, are you convinced? Will you now be happy when someone places a bounty on your head? E-mail me at [email protected] and let me know. And, of course, also let me know about any upcoming charity tournaments, as I am always interested in playing poker for a worthy cause.



Matt Matros is the author of the book The Making of a Poker Player, which is available online at http://www.cardplayer.com/.