# PKOs: Bounty EV Is Not a Trophy MTT > Progressive knockouts pay you to bust people. Cover versus covered, bounty EV versus ICM, and why playing a PKO like a Sunday trophy flight is how you blind out of both pots. Canonical: https://unmatchedpoker.com/formats/pkos Publisher: Unmatched Poker — https://unmatchedpoker.com/ Last reviewed: August 31, 2026 Note: Educational Hold'em magazine. Not a poker room, not financial advice, not a signup funnel. 18+/21+. --- Formats # PKOs are not a trophy MTT Half the prize pool is on people’s heads. That is not flavor text. It is a second game running on top of the first one, and it will punish you for playing a regular-MTT script until the bounties are “out of the way.” Progressive knockoutsLast reviewed August 31, 2026 A progressive knockout pays you a bounty when you eliminate someone. You pocket some of that bounty in cash. The rest goes on your own head, which means the next person who busts you gets paid more for the privilege. The prize pool is split: regular payout ladder on one side, bouncing bounty pool on the other. If you ignore the bouncing part you are playing half the tournament. People do this constantly. They min-cash a PKO with a tiny bounty and wonder why the “real grinders” are gambling in pots that look insane on a chip-EV screenshot. Those pots are not insane. They are priced in a currency you are not counting. Vanilla “never pay off a shorty” is how you get blinded out of the actual prize pool while the bounties walk to someone who can do math. Vanilla “gamble every pot for a head” is how you bubble 14th with King-five. Sit between those two people and eat. ## Two pots, one table Every PKO decision has two expected values stacked on top of each other. There is chip EV, which becomes ICM EV as the regular payouts get close. And there is bounty EV: the cash you collect for bursting someone, plus the extra bounty you add to your own head, which is future cash you might or might not see. Early in a PKO, bounty EV is a huge slice of the pie because the ladder is far away. Late, ICM on the regular prize pool starts yelling again — and the biggest bounties in the room are also late. People who “only play for bounties” spew the ladder. People who “ignore bounties because ICM” donate the overlay that made them enter a PKO instead of a regular freezeout. Play both. A $22 PKO that puts $10 in the regular pool and $12 on bounties is not a $22 MTT with a garnish. It is a bounty tournament that happens to have a ladder. Play it like a $109 Sunday trophy flight and you will fold AJo for 18bb into a 12bb stack with a bounty worth more than the min-cash gap you are protecting. That fold is how you go broke politely. BOUNTY CALL, SKETCHED $109 PKO, $50 bounty on a 9bb stack you cover. Pot odds on the call look like a 9bb shove. Extra: you win $50 (or half, depending on the operator's progressive split) if you eliminate them. That extra is like being paid to call. Hands that are folds in a vanilla MTT become calls. Hands that are jams into a cover become folds if you are the one covered and their bounty is huge — you are offering them a market. Exact dollars depend on the split (often you get some now, some added to your own bounty). Read the lobby. Do not guess. ## Cover versus covered This is the PKO sentence: the player who can bust the other player owns the bounty. If you cover them, you can collect. If they cover you, they can collect. If you are within a blind of each other, you can both collect depending who has more after the hand. Effective stack is not just SPR. It is who gets paid when the weaker stack hits zero. When you cover a short stack, calling ranges get wider, shoving ranges get wider, and “let them blind out” gets dumber. Letting them blind out in a regular MTT can be correct ICM. Letting them blind out in a PKO is leaving a bounty on the table for someone else. The short stack’s bounty is a cash chip sitting in the middle with their name on it. Someone is going to pick it up. If the price is close, it should be you. When you are covered, the opposite. The big stack is getting paid to look you up. Your fold equity is worse than the ICM model from a regular MTT because they are not just calling with chips — they are calling with a bounty ticket. Jamming 14bb with KTo into a 60bb cover who has been hunting is a different price than jamming it into a 20bb stack you cover. The cards did not change. The payday did. Pay attention to bounty size, not just stack size. A 20bb stack with a monster progressive bounty can be more valuable to knock out than an 8bb stack with the starting bounty. Recs hunt the short stack because short is visible. Regs hunt the price. The price is chips at risk versus cash on the head. Do the comparison out loud in your head before you auto-fold the button. ## Bounty EV versus ICM Regular MTT ICM says: do not burst yourself on the bubble while shorter stacks exist. PKO ICM says the same thing about the regular ladder — and then the bounty pool says “yes, but.” On a stone bubble, a tiny starting bounty does not always pay you enough to take a flip that busts you out of the min-cash. A huge progressive bounty might. The min-cash is a number. The bounty is a number. Compare them. Do not use a vibe. Deep in the money, regular-ladder ICM can still be large at a final table while bounties are also large because the surviving heads have been collecting all day. This is where PKO final tables stop looking like trophy final tables. People jam into each other with hands that would be folds in a freezeout. They are not crazy. They are collecting. If you sit there folding “because ICM” while two covers feast on medium stacks, you will ladder into a small regular payout and watch the bounty pool walk to someone else’s cashier. The [ICM pillar](/strategy/icm-and-tournament-ladder) still matters. PKO does not delete the ladder. It adds a cash overlay that is often bigger than the next pay jump. Learn the ladder first so you know what you are overlaying. Then add the bounty. People who skip the first step become maniacs. People who skip the second become trophy tourists in a format that does not award trophies. A practical shortcut that is wrong in the tails but useful in the middle: when you cover, add some of the bounty (in big blinds) to your calling equity. When you are covered, subtract some fold equity from your shoves. How much is “some”? Starting bounty of $10 in a $22 PKO at 2,000/4,000 blinds is a different conversion than a $400 bounty on your head in a $109. Convert dollars to bb at the current level. If that sounds annoying, good. It is supposed to slow you down. Auto-pilot is how freezeout players donate PKOs. ## A PKO hand [Hero's hole cards] Middle stage, you have 28bb, a 9bb stack open-shoves UTG, you are in the big blind with King-Ten suited and you cover. Vanilla MTT: this is a fold a lot of the time, especially near a bubble. PKO with a $70 bounty on their head: you are being paid to gamble. Equity vs a shoving range that includes a lot of junk is real. The bounty is real. The ladder is still far. Call more than your cash-game pride wants. If this is the actual bubble of a PKO, mix — the min-cash still exists, the bounty still exists, and the answer is not a slogan. The next street, if there is one, is still Hold'em. Sets are sets. The format’s unique work is preflop and all-in: who is covered, who is covering, who has the dead money on their head, who is in the big blind with a stack that cannot wake up without putting themselves at risk. You will open wider when you cover the blinds. You will 3-bet wider when the opener is a stack you can bust. You will fold some 3-bets you would call in a freezeout when the 3-bettor covers you and has a bounty look in their timing. ## Preflop is where the format lives Short-stack push-fold still exists. The charts move. Covered short stacks shove tighter because they get called wider. Covering short stacks shove wider because they get paid. If you take a freezeout 15bb chart and stamp it onto a PKO, you are using the wrong map. Recs do the other mistake: they shove any two when they cover, including 83o from UTG into three covers behind. Covering means you can get paid. It does not mean 83o is a good idea with people left to act who can bust you back. Study the [push-fold primer](/tools/push-fold-primer), then tax it with cover and bounty size before you ship. Calling all-ins is the leak that pays the best players. Freezeout brain: “I need 42% to call.” PKO brain: “I need 42% minus the bounty I pick up when I win, plus the extra risk if I lose and I was covered.” You will call off 18bb with A7o against a 12bb shove you cover in spots that look disgusting on a replay. The replay does not show the $18 that just hit your account. The replay is a liar. ## Common PKO leaks, in the wild Playing it like a trophy MTT. Folding too much on the bubble with covers in front of you. Protecting a 30bb stack like it is a Sunday brand flight while $40 bounties walk around the table. This is the tourist leak. Regular [MTTs](/formats/mtts) do not have this market. Do not import PKO lines into a Sunday field that does not pay you for heads, and do not import freezeout folds into a PKO that does. Playing it like a bounty hunter with no ladder. Calling every shorty shove with K3o twelve from the money while three shorter stacks exist and your bounty is tiny. Busting 13th for nothing when the min-cash plus your small bounty was the actual price. This is the maniac leak. PKO is not “gamble every pot.” It is “price the extra pot.” Ignoring who covers whom. Calling a jam from a stack that covers you, for a bounty you cannot collect if you lose, with a hand that was a fold in both models. You do not get their bounty if you go broke first. This sounds obvious. Watch an $11 PKO for an hour. It is not obvious to the field. Tunnel vision on the shortest stack. The 6bb is not always the best bounty. The 22bb with a snowball head is. If you cannot see the bounty amounts, turn on the display. Playing PKO with bounties hidden is like playing cash with the blinds unknown. ## Variance, roll, and the absence of a trophy PKOs spike harder than freezeouts of the same buy-in because you can run up a bounty snowball or run into every cover on the table. A good PKO player can still be broke for a month of $22s. That is not a leak by itself. It is the shape. You need more bullets than you think, or you need a smaller buy-in. Twenty freezeout buy-ins is not twenty PKO buy-ins. Give yourself room or play the freezeout. Treat them like MTTs on the order of 100 bullets if this is how you eat, and more if the structure is a turbo spin-off. There is no trophy. There is a ladder and a set of bounties. If you need a picture with a bracelet, this is the wrong product. If you want a format where busting people is a feature instead of a dirty ICM surprise, this is the one. Play it as itself. The people who complain that PKOs are “just gambling” are usually freezeout players who refuse to call off with the price in front of them. The people who think PKOs are “just gambling” in the other direction are the ones calling 83o. ### Leaks we still see in the wild Calling every 8bb shove “for the bounty” with King-five offsuit as a 20bb stack near the money. Folding Ace-Queen to a 7bb jam you cover because a cash-game coach said fold. Playing a PKO like a satellite. Ignoring the lobby’s bounty split. ### When to deviate Huge bounty + cover + far from money: call wider. Tiny bounty + bubble + you are medium: fold wider than you think. If you are the covered short stack, shove tighter; they are not folding. If everyone at the table is bounty-mad, let them collide and pick up the pieces. Progressive knockouts are honest about what they are: two prize pools taped together. Tape your strategy together the same way. Ladder where the ladder is expensive. Hunt where the head is expensive. Do not ask the format to be a Sunday trophy flight. It declined that job on purpose.