In the age of social media, April Fool's Day has become a hit-or-miss event as companies and brands put out messaging about fake products and events — pranks that either hit a funny note or fall flat. On occasion, a joke made on April Fool's Day eventually turns into something real, either due to public reaction or changes in taste.
The team at Borgata Poker got a head start on the proceedings this week with the announcement of an April Fool’s Gold Mystery Bounty tournament, with bounty prizes including the ability to warp all the way to the final table and multiple ways to save your tournament from certain doom.
The only thing is, they’re skipping the first part of the April Fools equation and going right into the real deal.
A new mystery bounty experience
The week of April Fools wraps up with a $200 tournament on Friday, April 4 at 12 pm ET at Borgata that is likely to test the limits of what a Mystery Bounty tournament is capable of — and Borgata’s Director of Poker Operations Kellie deCelis is excited to see how it all plays out.
Borgata is taking the mystery bounty concept in a very different direction. “My team and I started talking about how poker was an experience altogether, and how you could beat yourself up over how you played hands,” said de Celis. “And we asked what we could do to give players the opportunity to actually become a winner in that instance. So we started brainstorming all these different things; like, you're trying to draw for a straight and you miss it on the river, or your aces get cracked, and you're just eliminated entirely, right?
“So we really looked at all of those things. We said okay, we want about 50 options, right? And we want it all to really be positive because I know this isn't brand new; I've seen other mystery bounties that have had a bounty you could pull where you're eliminated from the tournament. To me, that's not a good experience.”
Follow the Yellow Brick Road
The April Fool’s Gold Mystery Bounty tournament will feature at least 50 bounty prizes once registration closes. Some of them will be small cash prizes representing a total of 10 percent of the prize pool — intended to also distribute an equitable portion of the prize pool to make up for the automatic ‘Yellow Brick Road’ bounty that takes a player out of the tournament field and places them directly at the final table with an average stack.
The other 40 unique bounties fall under four categories: card advantages (8), tournament advantages (27), elimination protections (4), and chip bonuses (9). Benefits include extra cards in a variety of different ways, refunds for certain actions under certain conditions, the covering of blinds and antes and four different ways to stave off elimination directly. To satisfy these bounties, chips will be added into play and not removed from the player who rightfully wins a pot.
Once the final table is set, all of the mystery bounties are removed from play.
Something different at Borgata
While the April Fool's Day holiday offers an outstanding window to try a tournament that might fall under the criticism of silliness from some more serious players, the origins of this event come from a place of curiosity and creativity to see how a mystery bounty tournament might be better tailored to lower buy-in levels.
“We ran our first mystery bounty here at Borgata with ‘The Return’ of poker in January 2023, and it was a really big bounty prize pool, over a million dollars in total," said deCelis. “And then the next one we did, we actually had a half-million dollar bounty. That's big, big money, and we get the interest, and the fun that a mystery bounty tournament is supposed to have.
“But when you're looking at doing a smaller buy-in mystery bounty tournament, you don't want $80 going to the prize pool and $80 going to the mystery bounty — you're not going to have as much excitement for bounties or payouts. Also, it never fails that once the big prize is drawn, all the wind kind of goes out of everybody else, right? And so we were thinking about mystery bounties from the idea that we want them to be fun for every pull, we want them to be exciting, and poker isn't just about the money, it's about the experience.”
Making the magic happen
The logistical quirks of this particular mystery bounty format will test the capabilities of Borgata’s dealers and floor staff in ways both expected and unexpected. But deCelis is hopeful that strong preparation will allow for a well-executed event.
“Before we ever release a structure, we always go through it step by step and ask, ‘How does this really look from an operations perspective?'” said deCelis. “Our bounty cards are pre-printed, and we are going to print exactly what you see on the structure sheet for every bounty. If you pull the Magic Queens bounty, it will say Magic Queens, and then it will also say, ‘Use this bounty card to win an amount equal to the pot if you lose with pocket queens.’
Kellie deCelis and her world class staff are ready for a unique set of challenges. “For the dealer perspective and the floor perspective, when a player utilizes the bounty card, all we want the dealers to do at that time is to call ‘floor.’ The floor person can come over with their little clipboard and they can say, ‘Okay table, this player’s using magic queens. That means, because he's lost with these queens, he's going to get that amount back.’
"We'll count the pot down, award the chips and we’ll announce to all players in the tournament that whatever the total amount of that pot is has just been added into the total chips in play.”
Taking a chance with fun in mind
There’s no telling how the actual tournament will go over on April 4, how the players will react, and how the bounties will alter the course of the event. But so long as everything is executed as written and planned, there’s no bad outcome for the April Fools' Gold Mystery Bounty tournament.
And perhaps, when all is said and done, players will have a few more laughs and a little more fun in the spirit that’s intended.
“We kind of included all of those nightmares of poker, and tried to turn them into something that's going to be really fun,” said deCelis. “For the first time ever, both the winner and the loser of the hand get to celebrate, because if I crack your aces, I'm going to win the pot, but you are going to be given an amount equal to the pot, so we're both happy. I hope it's a lot of fun.”
