Knockout tournaments: Down for the count for me

This weekend as I wrapped the last of my Christmas presents and finally finished off Ken Burns' The War (good, good stuff but, man, did it seem like it lasted longer than the actual war), I tried a couple of FullTilt's new Knockout tournaments.

"Knockout" is just a longer and less cool word for "Bounty." A portion of your entry fee goes to a bounty on your head. For each player you scalp, you collect his bounty. The pay table, of course, is dialed back a bit to accommodate the bounties.

What I found is to be successful in these tournaments, you need to play a style that I'm not comfortable with - hyperaggressive. For example, in a $3+0.30 KO tournament, 50 cents goes toward your bounty. To earn your entry free back, you'll need to knock out seven of the 90 entrants. (Of course, if you succeed in doing that you're likely well on your way to a top 9 finish and cashing).

Since you have to have more chips than an opponent in order to knock him out (master of the obvious!), I'm thinking the correct strategy to maximize ROI is to build up a stack early so you can attack those smaller stacks. And that means pushing the action and gambling early - pretty much the opposite of what you typically want to do in a double stack tournament.

So, for that reason, I'm not seeing a compelling reason to play these. The devil's advocate in me does make a good case for using these tournaments to learn to be more aggressive, which is definitely a weakness in my no-limit tournament play. And nothing says you have to win back your entire entry fee in bounties - even two or three consistently can go a long way toward improving ROI.

But for me, I think I'm going to tell FullTilt "thanks, but no thanks" for this new wrinkle.

How about you?

- SCOTT

Comments

[OhCaptain]

I played a few of them this weekend as well. It became pretty apparent to me that you need to get lucky early and build the big stack to use like a club later. There wasn't a lot of skill to the first few levels. 5 people all in was not uncommon in the ones that I played.

If you know a good hand when you see one...end never get one...it's hard to see spending much money on these. Any two suited cards, or basically anything above 32o was fair game at my tables.

I agree...Thanks, but no thanks.

[loser64]

I played the a few, in general I do not like turbo's. I had success a few time, I had 2 thirds, one time I did not knock anyone out and got third, do not ask me how.

I have a $26 token and vew few dollars, I am gonna play the knockout tourney they run 2 times a day with 10 minute blinds. Should be interesting.

[gadzooks64]

I played a $10 Knockout recently.

Yes, it was torture.

Yes, I was grossly card dead and made it to 150ish/500.

Yes, I ran TT into KK on my last hand.

Yes, I probably won't play any more of these.

[Mike F.]

If I'm in a tournament, there is only one player I'm looking to knock out, and that is the one I'm playing heads-up against for first place. Hunting scalps skews play. You should always let the scalps come to you, grasshopper. These things are just fish-fests that create bad playing habits.

[Blazman]

I have cashed in 2 of the $20 bounty tournies on cake. I think that have played then 6-7 times. I have a 3rd and a 5th. I took the exact opposite approach. I played tight, mixing up just enough to get action when I have a hand. I wait in the weeds till I get a hand and then I get it in with another player. Their play is bad because they are looking for bounties. I completely ignore the bounty and play it like a tourney with super aggressive players. If I get a bounty or 2 then great, if not fine I'll take the prize pool money.

-Blaz

[Erik]

I totally agree with Blaz.

[ungarop]

I tried one of the 3+0.30 turbo ko SNGs yesterday for the first time. It wasn't as crazy as OhCaptain said, I did not see many multi-player all-ins.

I had 1 bounty at the break and an above average stack then got disconnected (freakin' Starbucks wifi). When I finally got back in, I had T100 left and finished in 12th.

[Chicago Jason]

I take Blaz's approach as well. I've played in two of these so far. Like any MTT of 27 or more on Full Tilt, you need to stay out of the way of the monkeys early on unless you're fortunate enough to find a monster.

I spent the first 30 minutes of my most recent tourney laying low and hovered between the starting chip stack (3000) and 4500 until blinds started to get more significant and the survival instinct started to play a factor.

I then spent the next 50 minutes as the chip leader of the 90 player field. I looked for opportunities to pick up chips without picking a fight. Would you believe that I climbed to, and maintained, the chip lead for 50 minutes while picking up only ONE bounty of a short-stacked player. That was the only player I knocked out of the tourney.

When we got down to 20, the wheels fell off. I lost two or three coin flips in about two button revolutions. I busted in 13th when, after having lost a good chunk of my stack, an opponent that barely had me covered got it all in bad and three-outted me on the end. Such is life. Such is poker.

Don't play for the bounties. Play for the win. At some point you'll have to knock people out to win.

[Dave G]

I have been playing the $3 KOs and I have been successful recently. I play tight early (similar to Blaz). I also have found that the $24 KO tournaments to be good. I have won a couple of tokens and played them with good success. The KO is $4.