Bounty Tournaments

I look forward to the Los Angeles Poker Classic every year. I’ve been living in Orange County, LA’s little sibling, for 10 years now and I consider the LAPC to be my hometown series. It’s the only remaining single starting day no re-entry $10,000 buy-in main event that I know of, keeping it nice and old school.

In addition to a throwback main event, they innovate with their schedule every year. Matt Savage is the head tournament director and he comes up with a diverse playing experience. It’s the first place I played an iron man tournament with no breaks and no deals. It is the first place I saw the elevator concept with levels starting at 10 minutes long and gaining five minutes at each level change.

It’s also the home to one of my favorite events of the year, the $1,100 turbo big bounty. The bounties are a huge $500, 45 percent of the total buy-in. Besides the main event there, it’s one event I make certain not to miss each year. With the addition of the bounties as a way to make some money without cashing, the fast structure, and the fact that it’s the last tournament on the schedule most years, it’s a big field that’s usually relatively soft for the buy-in. People are stuck from the series and looking to get even so they come in with a mindset to gamble.

Gambling isn’t necessarily a bad strategy in a tournament with a structure like this. Since the bounties are so big, a little extra preflop gamble in situations where you’re calling an all-in is a good idea. Here’s how you go about figuring out exactly how much extra gamble you should have.

First, let’s take a look at a hand and then I’ll tell you how to apply math to the bounty situation to figure it out. The hand I’m posting is most likely a no-brainer spot to get all the chips in, even without the bounty, but with the bounty, it’s a slam dunk.

Two people limp at 75-150 blinds with 10,000-chip stacks. I make it 600 with 10 9 from three off the button and both of the limpers call. The flop is K 10 8 and they both check to me. I bet 1,300 into 2,025. The first limper calls and the second limper makes it 3,500. I go all in for 9,500 total (second limper and I had the exact same amount, so the bounty is in play). The first limper folds and the second limper calls with 8-8. I don’t improve enough and he wins.

First of all, analysis with no bounty. I have 39 percent equity against a calling range of 8-8, K-10, Q J, A J, and K-8 (which is a very tight calling range) and I’m putting 9,500 in to win 9,500 (If I’m called by the raiser) +2,025 (the preflop money) +1,300 (the amount that the folder put in) or 12,825. It’s not quite the 1.5-1 I need to break even on the call, but if our opponent folds 20 percent of the time after making it 3,500, we break even and we need fewer folds the looser our opponent’s calling range is. Things get even better for us if we get them to both put money in with similar ranges, but I digress. How do we figure out how the bounty plays into all of this?

It’s really quite simple. The bounty, as discussed before, is 45 percent of the total buy-in of the event. We started with 15,000 in chips. (15,000)(.45)=6,750. Every time someone is all-in and you cover them, you can act like there is an extra 6,750 chips in the pot. So, in the above situation, instead of there being 12,825 in the pot that I’m jamming into, there is 12,825 + 6,750 = 19,575. We’re now getting better than 2-1 when we have, at worst, 39 percent equity, a wonderful situation to be in.

Now that we know how to figure out the equity of the bounty, how does this affect our play? It means that we should be looking for spots that would be marginal calls to moderately clear folds early in the tournament. These are now situations that we need to look at more carefully. All marginal calls and marginal folds are definite calls and some of the moderately clear folds are calls as well.

This effect cools off more the deeper the tournament goes. When the blinds are 1,000-2,000, adding 6,750 chips into the pot doesn’t really do much to swing your decisions, and it does even less at 10,000-20,000.

The bounty tournament really didn’t afford me many difficult decisions this year, but it certainly has in the past and I’m looking forward to my chance to use this knowledge again next year. ♠

Gavin Griffin was the first poker player to capture a World Series of Poker, European Poker Tour and World Poker Tour title and has amassed nearly $5 million in lifetime tournament winnings. Griffin is sponsored by HeroPoker.com. You can follow him on Twitter @NHGG