PokerStars kicked off with a mouth-watering $30 million Bounty Builder from the 11th to the 25th of October. Players once again showed off their knockout skills with the new $30M GTD Bounty Builder Series. The Poker Series is one of the most highly anticipated and famous poker tournaments with an incredible prize pool of $30 million. Bounty Builders provides players with a series of exciting Progressive Knockout tournaments every day, each with a prize pool. Many of the Bounty Builders tournaments have enhanced win guarantees in the evenings. PokerStars brought back the bounty-focused competition festival, adding seasonal spirit with Halloween-themed promos. The two-week-long series featured 180 progressive bounty tournaments while last year’s Bounty Builder series offered $25 million in guarantees. The highlight of the festival is the buy-in Main Event, and like the previous two year’s BBS Main Events, it was a two-day tournament with a minimum of $2 million in prize money. The event played eight-handed and a maximum of three reentries. In the 2018 poker series, the German Julius won the event, claiming $306,000 while streaming on Twitch.
The Bounty Builder Series in October has a massive prize pool of $30,000,000, given exclusively in 213 Progressive Knockout tournaments. The highlights of this year’s series included two Main Events on October 25. The buy-ins were $55 and $530 and a guarantee of $1M and $2.5M, respectively. There was also a Special Edition $109 Sunday Million with a $1.5 million prize pool. Apart from that, the poker series offers players 23 more Bounty Builder competitions with a prize pool of $250,000. There is a $530 High Roller with a $1M prize pool among them. The buy-ins for the Bounty Builder Series started at $1.10, and there were Spin & Go tourneys with a buy-in of $4, offering the chance to win tickets worth up to $530 for the Main Event.
How Does it Work?
The series offers no-limit hold’em events, with some other variants like pot-limit Omaha added to the mix. All tournaments feature a progressive knockout format where bounties on each player increase as they send more to the rail. Each poker player starts with a bounty on their head. Still, when you knock someone out, part of your compensation goes to your pocket, and the other, which is typically 50/50, gets added to the bounty, hence progressive. A total of 47 of the events speed up in structure, with 43 turbos and four hyper-turbos. In addition to traditional PKO events, there are other varieties, including the Win the Button and Progressive Total KO main events. With the former, whoever wins the hand also gains the advantage of the position that comes with it. With the latter, the buy-in, minus the rake, goes toward the bounty pool.
Let’s look at the following as an example. If you are playing with a $55 Bounty Builder Series event, $25 of your buy-in amount goes towards the main prize pool and another $25 towards the bounties. If the starting stack is 25,000, a PKO of $12.50 is awarded for each player who is eliminated. As the winning amount is half of the overall bounty, a $12.50 bounty equals 12,500, half the starting stack in chips. Your 25,000 in chips equals $25, and the player to your left has only 10,000 chips with a bounty of $12.50. The blinds amount to 250/500, and you open to 1,000. They then move all-in, and the others all fold. The pot is 11,750 now, including the big and the small blinds; therefore, you should put in 9,000 to win 20,750. Here is how you can calculate your odds. The Total Pot is 11,750 ÷ Amount to Call (9,000) = 1.3 = 1 to 2.3 odds. You have to convert that into hand equity, and you work out the equity of your hand by calling. One ÷ 2.3 = 43%. Your hand will need 43% equity to make the call profitable. Their $12.50 bounty is up for grabs as well, and they equal 12,500 in chips, so they are all in for 22,500, which is 10,000 plus 12,500.
Bonuses & Promos
The BBS comes with an array of Halloween-themed promos, including the $5,000 Halloween KO Leaderboard, Trick or Treat tournaments, with BBS tickets added. There are Midnight Challenges and three Halloween Freerolls with a $10,000 prize for each. The five players who manage to accrue the most knockouts get a portion of the $5,000 leaderboard prize, while other top bounty-hunters win seats to the $10,000 freerolls, which run over Halloween. In the previous year’s edition, Bananero17 managed to log 392 KOs to earn the top assassin spot, winning leaderboard cash, as well as one of two $30,000 Platinum, Passes handed out during the series. There were no Platinum Passes this time around, and players earned tickets to the $10,000 Halloween Freerolls by beating their opponents. In select tournaments on Trick or Treat Wednesday and Friday, players could claim tricks of $1.10 and $5.50 BBS tourney tickets or treats worth $22 BBS tickets. Special 24, and 18-player Super-KO Sit-n-Go’s called the Midnight Challenges ran after the Bounty Builder events every day of the poker series. Knocking out at least five players gains entry into the All-in Shootout event that awards $2,000 in BBS tournament tickets.
Poker Games
PokerStars allows players to enjoy all their favourite poker games with thousands of other poker players 24/7. That means you always find full tables for any game, at any limit you want to play. PokerStars offers the most poker options anywhere online, so players are sure to find an exciting poker option, whether Hold’em, Stud, or Draw. If you are inexperienced at poker, you can learn everything you need to know to get started by clicking on the Read more tab, available for any games. It provides detailed information on the rules and how to play the game. No matter how experienced you are, the free Poker School can add a few ideas to your arsenal. It is always a fantastic idea to improve with learning, and the Poker School is the ideal solution, especially since it is free. Who knows, you might be the next PokerStars winner!