Progressive Knockout

In a PKO, half of your buy-in goes to the standard prize pool, and the other half goes toward your personal bounty. When you knock a player out, you instantly win half of their bounty, while the other half is added to your own bounty. This makes players with high eliminations incredibly lucrative targets late in the game.

Because of the growing bounties, PKO strategy dictates that players must adjust their calling and shoving ranges to account for the monetary value of the bounty. You are mathematically incentivized to call all-ins more widely if the bounty is large enough to offset pot odds. Additionally, being the chip leader grants immense leverage to bully shorter stacks for their bounties.

PKOs were popularized by online poker sites like PokerStars, who trademarked the name and run massive series like the Bounty Builder Series. GG Poker and partypoker also offer massive daily schedules of progressive bounty formats. These tournaments routinely generate larger fields than standard freezeout formats.

If the tournament is a standard PKO, when the final two players are heads up, the winner claims the runner-up's bounty and their own bounty is automatically awarded to themselves. This ensures that 100% of the bounty money is paid out by the end of the event. However, some special formats, like Mystery Bounties, handle the final payout structures differently.