Unlocking the Mystery: Early Stage Mystery Bounty Tournament Strategy

Over the last five years or so, Mystery Bounty tournaments (MBs) were introduced to the live poker ecosystem. They continue to rise in popularity, having considerable representation in the online tournament scene as well.

They’re here to stay.

And they’re grossly misunderstood.

Aside from being a total luckbox, is the Mystery Bounty format beatable?

In this article, you’ll learn:

• What Mystery Bounty tournaments are
• Why you should play them
• How to play the early stages before bounties are in play

What is a Mystery Bounty Tournament?

Mystery Bounty (MB) tournaments are a lottery variant of bounty tournaments.

Unlike standard knockouts (KO), where each player has a fixed bounty, or progressive knockouts (PKO), where each player’s bounty increases as players are eliminated, in the MB format, the bounty amount (a payout for eliminating a player) is…well… a mystery.

You don’t know what the bounty amount will be until the player has been knocked out.

Rather than bounty payouts being available from the tournament start, mystery bounties are typically reserved for players who make it in the money (ITM).

The value of any knockout can vary from a small multiple of the tournament buy-in amount to prizes equal to podium-finish payouts.

It’s not uncommon for the largest bounty to exceed first place money.

What’s the Big Deal about Mystery Bounty Tournaments?

Mystery Bounty tournaments provide a unique opportunity in the poker tournament landscape to win final table money without necessarily making a deep run.

Draw the right envelope and it’s like winning the tournament without actually winning it.

In a traditional format tournament, all the buy-ins are distributed through final placement payouts from ITM onward. There, studying chipEV and ICM strategies is enough to produce tournament ROIs. The average recreational player may know how to play poker for chips but is always at risk of making ICM blunders that benefit their more studied opponents.

In a PKO, a layer of complexity is added through the introduction of starting and progressing bounties. While the knockout bounty helps soften the blow of losing, long-term ROIs are reserved for those who put in the extra work to learn the underlying math of the format.

In both cases, the skill gap between the learned and unlearned means the latter will have a hard time winning. The lottery element of the MB serves to remove some of the skill gap between professional and recreational players, or serious and fun players. This makes the format attractive to those who register for fun. And for that reason, many pros and aspiring pros have spoken out against it.

However, the fact that the skill gap shrinks in MBs does not mean there is no skill involved or no edge to be had.

It’s actually the opposite.

That Mystery Bounty tournaments attract so much soft action means there is a lot of dead money in the prize pool, making them very profitable.

Unlocking the Mystery in MBs

Before you can understand the strategic differences of this format, it’s important to consider the priorities of the other formats, like vanilla and other KOs.

In vanilla tournaments, the tournament oscillates between chipEV (cEV) to ICM-style play. The idea here is that the most important thing in vanilla tournaments is to make ITM, make deep runs, and reach podium finishes.

• This is why you play cEV strategies in the earliest stages of the tournament. You aren’t really trying to survive. You are trying to play the highest EV strategy you can, using an appropriate mix of GTO and exploits.
• As the money nears, the priority shifts away from chip accumulation since losing hurts more than winning helps. The need to survive and the leverage around it becomes apparent.
• After the bubble bursts, the game returns to more ICM-taxed cEV play and then ICM starts to heat up again toward the final few tables (field size dependent).

The introduction of KOs (bounties) brings more adjustments.

In your typical KO, where eliminating players results in a static bounty, capturing bounties becomes the most important priority at the earliest levels of the tournament.

• The bounties, when converted to chips, are worth the most at the start of the tournament, becoming less valuable in big blinds as the tournament progresses.

However, PKOs are different. While the priority in the early stages is to accumulate bounties and secure your fair share of the bounty prize pool, these grow in value the more players you eliminate.

• This means as the tournament progresses, eliminating some players is worth more to you than others which will result in several adjustments, like widening your ranges versus the players you cover, especially when they have a sizable bounty.

In both KO formats, the ICM pressure felt near the money bubble is lessened due to the 1x or less buy-in min-cash. Gambling early to win bounties and have a stack that can cover other players is paramount.

But MBs?

They’re a different beast.

The most typical format of MB is where half the buy-in is reserved for the bounty stage of the tournament. This occurs in the ITM stage.

Sometimes, MBs are structured in a way where the bounties become available shortly before the ITM, creating another stage altogether. you want to think about MBs as a two-phase format: before the bounties are in play and when they are in play.

Mystery Bounties – Early Stages

Since there are no bounties paid out until the bounty phase (ITM) is reached, common knowledge is that you should play the early stages for chips (cEV).

If you’re interested in working on your cEV game, check out Lucid Poker, Upswing’s own solver.

However, while that is true, naked cEV doesn’t take into account future rewards.

Remember, the bounties represent half of the tournament prize money. Squeezing into the money with a micro stack is obviously better than stone-bubbling but you can only unlock the bounty pool by entering the bounty phase with a stack that covers other players.

If you cover no one during the bounty phase, you simply can’t win a bounty.

Conversely, big stacks are disproportionately rewarded.

In a vanilla tournament, making ITM with a big stack increases your likelihood of a deep run but it in no way guarantees it. Tournaments have been won by players who entered ITM with a short stack.

But in MBs, a big stack serves as a gambling buffer, allowing players to chase bounties via all-ins, lose, survive, and continue chasing.

Making ITM with a lot of chips matters much more in an MB than in a vanilla tournament.

Big Pot Poker

Since making ITM with a big stack means you have more chances to capture the bounties, early stage play should reflect this bias: a bias of which cEV strategies are ignorant.

You should play in such a way that you can make ITM with an above average stack.

Big pot poker = Mystery bounty maxxing.

When a strategy mixes (meaning the EVs are the same for each action), take the action which can mean getting the bigger stack at pure weight. In close spots, edge-pass less often. In general, play greedier.

Here’s an example.

You are in the Big Blind and defend Qs 7s versus the Button open.

You see a flop of Qd 8h 6s and face a small c-bet.

What should you do?

Lucid Poker 50bb cEV strategy. BB v BTN 33% c-bet on Q86r. Qs7s mixes call and check-raise.

In this instance, calling and check-raising your weak-kicker Qx is worth the same EV, your hand is worth ~5.87bb.

But you aren’t just trying to play perfect GTO.

You are trying to maximize opportunities where you can increase your stack.

Here, I would check-raise for the 25% pot size every time. This is a happy medium: to balance your increased check-raise frequency, you choose the smaller of the two sizes. You get more chips in the pot, more often, in a way that retains a wider continuing range.

Here’s another example.

You opened Under the Gun (UTG) with Kd Jd and face a Button flat-call.

You c-bet a As 7d 2c flop. They call.

The turn brings the Qd. You over-bet the turn and they call again.

The river brings the Ac.

The final board being As 7d 2c Qd Ac.

You’re a bit nervous now because it’s harder for you to have trips. What should you do?

Lucid Poker 50bb cEV strategy. UTG v BTN river strategy on A72r Qx Ax with KJs. After UTG c-bet and turn over-bet. KdJd makes 0ev as all-in or check.

Notice, giving up and bluffing are both worth zero EV. Nada.

But again, we are trying to maximize our chances at a big stack. The solver already prefers going all-in to checking. Here, I would always go all in. Checking and giving up means we will be playing shallower whereas shoving leverages Button’s 44% fold range. Your bluff will succeed a little under half the time for a sizable pot and add to your stack.

Note: If you’re insufficiently rolled to re-enter or play these en masse, or if you are just taking a lottery shot, then it’s okay to play suboptimally given the relative infrequency of the event.

Psychologically, you’re going to have to accept that “kill by the sword, die by the sword” variance. You have to be OK with being coolered more often. That said, once you start nearing the money, gameplay should shift.

Mystery Bounties: Bubble Play

Even though min-cashing isn’t the top priority, retaining a stack that can capture a bounty remains very valuable.

On the one hand, the ICM tax is lessened since it’s usually a mere 1x min-cash. On the other, the future bounty EV means there is an increased opportunity cost of busting.

It’s not that there is no pressure to survive. There is. But the cause of that pressure, and how it is distributed, changes.

Short and Micro Stacks

While you’d rather have lots of chips, if you’re short, you’re in luck.

No one should be trying to bust you. You should get a lot of walks.

By knocking you out before the ITM stage, the players who cover you lose out on the cheap bounty once the money is made.

• A similar thing happens at final tables, where the chip leader may keep the micro stack alive to punish everyone else. Only here, any stack greater than the smaller stack at the table benefits from keeping the little guy around. This means you can play tight and should be left alone.
• You should even be able to attack small pots with short stacks since no one wants to bust you yet. However, this requires a thinking opponent, and even this late into MB history, people are overdoing it versus shorties.

Making ITM with any chips is good because you can still spin it up. In fact, the whale below once made ITM in a Mystery Bounty with 5bb, spun and pulled a big one:

Photo: Leonardo Song-Carrillo pulls a $100,000 bounty (Credit: WPT)

Nice guy. Good for him.

Middling Stacks

Suppose you are in a spot on the bubble where a 30bb stack opens, and on an equal stack, you have a standard 3-bet shove or 3-bet call all-in spot. Should you gamble for a big stack or wait for the money?

Here, you’ll need to use some foresight. Take your table configuration into account.

At a table where everyone has 30bb stacks, once the money is reached, getting bounties will be tougher since you will need to first increase your stack to cover the others and then win the all-in at a stack depth where their range will be a bit stronger (30bb is a lot to ship it pre, and the bubble is further polarizing).

In this case, you might elect to play for stacks now. By doubling up, you give yourself a better shot than anyone at your table to win bounties.

Now let’s say there are multiple stacks you and your opponent both cover.

Are either of you really interested in busting out? Within the next orbit or two, the money bubble will burst and there will be multiple stacks for you to eliminate. Losing a flip here, risking your elimination, or having your stack dwindle to crumbs would be excessively counterproductive to your future EV.

In the first example, take the flip. In the second, fold.

When playing versus a bigger stack, you should play tight. You need to preserve your stack utility for once the bounty phase is reached. Defending the Big Blind, calling a c-bet and folding the turn might seem small but can mean the difference between covering a player to your right whose bounty you could have captured had you saved your chips.

Big Stacks

Typically during bubble play, the big stack gets to apply pressure to everybody.

In the vanilla format, the short stacks experience the most ICM pressure because their stacks are worth more per chip than the other stacks. This remains true to a lesser degree. However, in MBs, the incentives for the big stack to bully the bubble are decreased.

As a big stack, you want to make the money with a bunch of shorties and mid stacks at your table. You want them to survive.

Does this mean you should quit attacking your table?

Not quite.

What you are looking to do is tax your opponents’ tournament life, not eliminate it altogether.

You attack, you bully, and you steal as long as you do not compromise your post-bubble burst chance of stacking them.

Let’s imagine two similar but sharply contrasted spots.

You’re two off the money and it folds to you on the Button. There is a 6bb stack in the Big Blind.

In a vanilla tournament, you would open very wide here (well over half the deck) since they have to defend so tight.

But opening and stealing their Big Blind here gets dicey.. Stealing their blind means they will be in the Small Blind next hand with 4.5bb. Their risk of busting before the bounty phase would increase. This is even worse if you are playing a big blind ante tournament. Here, you and the Small Blind should give the Big Blind a walk.

Now let’s say the player in the Big Blind has 10bb. In this case, steal away. Taking their bb doesn’t risk their survival in the same way as when they are a micro stack.

The post-bubble bounty opportunity serves as a survival shield for the shorter stacks.

Since the middling stacks need to preserve their bounty-capture utility, it’s the middling stacks you get to attack on the bubble. As long as there are shorter stacks on your table relative to theirs, you should apply pressure.

Whether versus short or middling stack, the line of reasoning should affect your postflop play as well. Close to the money and bounty phase, you should basically never try to stack your covered opponents since they are more valuable to you alive than dead.

At most, cripple them.

This is part one of a two- part series on Mystery Bounty tournaments. Part two is forthcoming and focuses on the bounty phase.

To learn more about how to play big pots in poker tournaments, read: How to Defend Against Large Flop C-Bets in Poker Tournaments.