Party Poker Extends Trial of PKO Bounty Satellites

Qualifying for Party Poker´s tournaments just got a lot more interesting – and potentially more rewarding – due to the site trialling PKO bounty satellites.

Readers with long memories may remember that online poker satellites were popular even before Chris Moneymaker qualified for, and won, the 2003 World Series of Poker Main Event. Not only do they give players the opportunity to qualify for tournaments with buy-ins beyond their bankrolls, but they can represent +EV for players of any bankroll level – especially when satellites offering a guaranteed number of seats into a target tournament are undersubscribed.

However, online poker satellites can be intensely dull because the objective is to finish in a qualifying position rather than build a stack to support an aggressive endgame. Furthermore, even if you qualify for the target tournament, there is no guarantee you will be rewarded for your efforts. It just takes one bad beat in the target tournament for the money you spent entering the online satellite – and the time you spent playing it – to be wasted.

Party Poker Announces Trial of PKO Bounty Satellites

It is because of the dullness of online poker satellites – and the risk of winning one, yet getting nothing from the target tournament – that Party Poker announced last week it was going to trial online poker satellites with a progressive knockout (PKO) element. The difference between the new PKO bounty satellites and regular online satellites is that half the buy-in becomes the bounty on each player´s head, while the other half contributes towards the prize pool.

This change not only makes playing online satellites more exciting, it also reduces the variance of playing in them. Each time you knock another player out, you win half the bounty on their head, and the bounty on your own head increases by the other half bounty. Once you knock two players out in a PKO bounty satellite, you have virtually won your buy-in back in bounties, and you are now freerolling for an entry ticket for the target tournament.

Like regular satellites, PKO bounty satellites end when the number of players remaining matches the number of tickets available for the target tournament. However, whereas in regular satellites, there is usually a lot of stalling and running down the clock, in PKO bounty satellites the bubble bursts much quicker. After all, if there´s a chance of winning an extra bounty for knocking out a short-stacked player without jeopardising the chance of qualifying for the target tournament, who´s not going to take it?

Party Poker Quietly Extends Trial to More Satellites

In the original announcement, Party Poker said there would be a selection of PKO bounty satellites trialled at different buy-in at 2:00pm. 6:00pm and 6:30pm each day (all times CEST). However, if you filter the tournament lobby for KO satellites, more PKO bounty satellites are being quietly introduced throughout the European early evening. Clearly, they are proving to be popular, and the likelihood is the trial will be further extended in the coming weeks.

It´s not difficult to see why the PKO bounty satellites are popular. Some players yesterday were not only winning tournament tickets and earning enough in bounties to cover the cost of the satellite buy-in – they were winning more in bounties than the cost of the target tournament buy-in. It´s that kind of opportunity that is currently driving players to [isGeoAllowed room=”partypoker”]Party Poker[/isGeoAllowed][isNotGeoAllowed room=”partypoker”]Party Poker[/isNotGeoAllowed]; and, if you are not yet playing at the site, you could be missing out on some excellent opportunities to have an interesting – and potentially more rewarding – online poker experience.