Knock Knock Knockin’ On Knock Outs’ Door

Sorry for all of you people who’ll have that song in your head for the rest of the day, but we couldn’t resist. Anyway, we’re here to tell you about poker knock outs today.

They are one of our favourite types of tournaments and after you read this, you’ll be in no doubt why that’s the case.

Poker knock outs: what does that even mean?

Let’s get straight to it with a simple definition. Poker knock outs are tournaments where you get a cash prize for every player you knock out. But on the other hand, your opponents also get a cash prize for knocking you out.

So you don’t have to get passed the bubble to make your buy-in back or even to make a profit. And it also adds an extra element of danger to the game too.

You might also come across knock outs by another name. Bounty tournaments. One refers to the action, the other refers to the prize. But both mean the same thing.

Typically, you poker knock outs are Texas hold’em tournaments, but you might be able to find the odd PLO or Six Plus option too, depending on where you look.

Where can you find these tournaments?

So poker knock outs, while common, aren’t necessarily on in every single place all the time. Much like flighted tournaments, you’re most likely to find knock outs on a schedule of a big poker festival. Or a decent online poker room.

For example, this year’s WSOP has 13 knock out events on the line up! And then if you want to find them online, a great place to look in bet365. Particularly during a poker series, they tend to offer progressive knock outs. And if you sign up now, you can use this bet365 bonus code for a great welcome offer.

Feeling like bringing one to your own home? Why not try your hand at hosting a fun poker night with a knock out tournament at the heart of the action?

A closer look at progressive knock outs

With every great poker tournament format, comes tweaks and changes to make it all the more exciting and enticing for players. We’ve seen it time and time again. And knock outs are the perfect target.

The souped up versions of knock outs will look different in every online poker room. But in bet365, they’ve got progressive knock outs, which are a whole heck of a lot of fun.

So they play out like a regular knock out, but with one crucial difference. Every time you knock a player out, you get a little extra added onto the bounty on your head, as well as pocketing a cash prize.

The other players can see this, and you can see your opponents increasing bounties too. That means the aggressive players end up attracting attention because knocking them out becomes even more lucrative.

And we love it.

A note on poker knock outs strategy

We’re not going to go overboard here on the strategy stuff for knock outs. We might get into it all again in a future post. However, there is one major thing you should keep in mind.

Don’t think of the bounty cash prize as the be all and end all goal of these tournaments. People often get distracted by them and that’s all they focus on. But keep in mind that if you get passed the bubble, you’re in for a potentially much bigger pay day.

It’s smart to work the bounties into your pot odds calculation. This is easily done by simply converting the bounty amount to chips. To do this, use the starting stack and your buy-in as a basis. Then whatever proportion the bounty amount is, is it’s effective worth in chips.

For example, you have a £10 buy-in and it’s a 1,000 chip starting stack. The bounty is £5 per player. Therefore, each bounty is worth 500 chips.

Once you do that, you’ll avoid the common pitfall and make way smarter knock out decisions. Trust us.

And for more poker strategy, you can check out these posts, podcasts and books.