PokerStars has announced that its popular Bounty Builder Series will return on two of its platforms in the coming weeks, with a massive schedule of events in store for both it global "dot.com" and Southern Europe platforms. The twin series will run from February 27 through March 13, 2022, serving up some of the largest series ever dedicated solely to specialty events.
The dot-com version of PokerStars' Bounty Builder Series will include 196 separate events over its 15-day run. The series will offer more than $25.5 million in guaranteed prize money. The complete schedule has yet to be released, but highlights will include two separate main events, with respective guaranteed prize pools of $1 million and $2 million.
The parallel Bounty Builder Series being offered on Stars' Southern Europe platform, which serves France, Spain, and Portugal, runs for the same 15 days. It's only slightly less massive in scope, with 174 separate events on tap. The Stars Southern Europe bounty series includes three main events, one for each weekend of the series, and the three mains offer prize-pool guarantees of €200,000, €300,000, €500,000, respectively. The Southern Europe bounty series offers another €6 million in guaranteed prize money over its own 15-day run.
KO, PKO, and new TKO formats all included
PokerStars' Bounty Builder Series may be all bounties, all the time, but there's still plenty of variation within the theme. Both the dot-com and Southern Europe slates will offer traditional knockout (KO) and progressive knockout (PKO) events, and they'll add in a few of the latest knockout variant, total knockout (TKO) events as well.
As PokerStars' Howard Swains writes on the PokerStars blog, "in these tournaments, 100 percent of a player’s buy-in goes into the bounty pool. There’s no regular prize pool, and players start with their entire buy-in on their heads as a bounty. If you knock someone out, you get half of your opponent’s bounty as a cash prize immediately, and half goes into your bounty, much like with a regular PKO tournament."
Since all of a player's buy-in goes to bounty payouts, there's no prize pool, and as Swain notes, no bubble. Instead, it's up to each player to simply accumulate as many knockouts along the way, especially the swollen bounties of those other player who themselves have knocked out multiple players as the tourney has progressed.
Swains also noted that most often at PokerStars -- though the TKO format itself is very new on the scene -- the format is played "Zoom" style, head to head, with players continually bounced from one table to another and ending up playing against a wide variety of foes. The dot-com version of the Bounty Builders series will include seven of these new TKO events, scattered throughout its two-weeks-plus schedule.
Further information on PokerStars' Bounty Builders Series is available on the PokerStars Blog.
Featured image source: PokerStars
