A PKO — progressive knockout — tournament splits your buy-in in two: half builds the regular prize pool, half becomes a bounty sitting on your own head. Knock a player out and you bank half of their bounty as instant cash, while the other half is welded onto your bounty. That compounding is the entire format. Bounties swell as the field shrinks, and deep in a big field one elimination can be worth more than the next pay jump.
What Your Buy-In Actually Buys
Take a $109 event, the shape you will meet most often on the GG Network. Nine dollars is rake. The remaining $100 splits down the middle: $50 into the prize pool everybody is playing for, $50 onto your head as a starting bounty.
Bust one opponent in the first hour and you collect $25 in cash, credited the moment the hand finishes — it is not held back until you cash. The other $25 fuses to your $50, so you now carry a $75 bounty. Bust a second player who has already taken a scalp of their own and you are collecting half of their inflated bounty, not half of the $50 base.
That is the distinction regulars obsess over and newcomers miss entirely: two opponents sitting on identical stacks are not worth the same money. GGPoker’s tournament-types page states the mechanic plainly — half the bounty is instant cash, half rolls forward. The 50/50 split is standard but not universal, so glance at the lobby before you register; a handful of events weight the bounty portion differently.
Why Every All-In Is Priced Differently
In a freezeout, calling a shove is a chip-EV question with an ICM tax on top. In a PKO you are also buying a scratch card that pays out the instant the hand is over, and that changes correct play in a specific direction.
The rule that matters most: only a player who covers the all-in can claim the bounty. If you cover the short stack, part of the pot is effectively already yours before cards are dealt, so your calling range widens — often dramatically against a 10-15 big blind shove. If you do not cover, no bounty is available to you, and calling wide because “there’s a bounty out there” is simply lighting money on fire.
The flip side is that your own bounty makes you a target. Short-stack in a PKO and you will get called by hands that would fold in a freezeout. Shoving ranges have to tighten a notch to compensate — the fold equity you are used to is not there.
Bounty Jackpots and the Variants Worth Knowing
Since 2022, GGPoker has bolted a jackpot draw onto selected progressive knockout events. Every knockout in a participating tournament carries roughly a 1-in-100 chance of triggering a share of that tournament’s Bounty Jackpot, funded by a slice skimmed from the bounty pool much like a bad-beat jackpot at a live table. The rarest tier, the Mega Bounty draw, scales with buy-in and tops out in the seven figures at the highest stakes. It applies only where the lobby carries the Bounty Jackpot tag — most PKOs do not have it.
Do not confuse the progressive format with its cousin. In a mystery bounty event the amounts are drawn at random from a pool once a bounty phase begins, so knockouts are lottery tickets of unknown size rather than a compounding figure you can read off the table. We break the differences down in our guide to how mystery bounty poker pays out.
The Bounty Hunters family also runs structural spin-offs: Speed Racer starts everyone at ten big blinds, Deepstack Turbo and Hyper Special compress the clock, and Forty Stack and Fifty Stack cap your starting chips. Each one changes how fast bounties compound, which is really the only variable that matters.
Reading the PKO Schedule From an Asian Time Zone
Volume is not the problem. GGPoker’s Bounty Hunters schedule lists more than 100 progressive knockouts a day from Monday to Saturday, with over $1,000,000 guaranteed daily, buy-ins running from $1.08 up to $320, and a $750,000 guaranteed Sunday Main Event.
The catch is the clock. Weekday events run roughly 00:10 to 23:30 UTC and Sunday’s fifty-plus tournaments run 06:30 to 23:30 UTC. Convert that and the picture sharpens:
- GMT+8 (Manila, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Taipei): Sunday runs 14:30 Sunday through 07:30 Monday.
- GMT+9 (Tokyo, Seoul): 15:30 Sunday through 08:30 Monday.
- GMT+7 (Bangkok, Jakarta, Hanoi): 13:30 Sunday through 06:30 Monday.
A deep run in a Sunday major finishes in the small hours on a work night across most of the region. Registering for the back half of the schedule without planning for that is the single most common way Asian players punt a good stack. Late registration closing times are worth checking twice.
Natural8 shares the same GG Network liquidity and the same Bounty Hunters lobbies, with Asia-facing support and its own rewards and promotions programme layered on top — relevant in a format where you are generating rake at pace. If you are weighing the two skins, our Natural8 and GGPoker comparison covers what actually differs.
Getting an account funded from your country is usually the sticking point rather than the poker. Drop a note to @PAGDaddyBot on Telegram if a deposit route stalls — a real person answers.
Four Ways Players Leak Bounty Value
Treating your bounty as a fixed prize. It is not a payout you own; it is money on your head that someone else collects. Only the half you take from others is yours.
Folding to short-stack shoves when you cover. This is the biggest single leak in the format. The bounty is dead money you have first claim on, and passing it up repeatedly costs more than a couple of thin calls gone wrong.
Chasing bounties you cannot win. Covering is binary. If the shover has one chip more than you, the bounty is irrelevant to your decision — play it as a pure freezeout spot.
Never separating the two income streams. Bounty cash and prize-pool cash have different variance profiles, and lumping them together hides which one is actually paying you. Tracking tools like GGPoker’s PokerCraft let you look at them apart.
PKO Poker FAQ
What does PKO stand for in poker?
PKO stands for progressive knockout. It is a bounty tournament in which half of each bounty you win is paid to you as cash and the other half is added to the bounty on your own head, so bounties grow throughout the event.
How much of my buy-in goes to the bounty?
Typically half of the net buy-in after rake. In a $109 tournament that is $50 to the prize pool and $50 to your bounty, with $9 as rake. Check the lobby, because a minority of events use a different weighting.
When do I get paid a bounty?
Immediately. The cash half of a bounty is credited to your balance as soon as the eliminating hand completes — you do not have to reach the money to keep it.
Can I win a bounty if I do not cover the all-in player?
No. Only a player whose stack covers the eliminated player can collect the bounty. If two players cover and split the pot with identical hands, the bounty is divided equally between them.
Should I call wider in a PKO?
Yes, but only when you cover the shover. The instant cash attached to the knockout justifies a meaningfully wider calling range against short stacks. Against a player who covers you, standard freezeout logic applies.
Where can Asian players find PKO tournaments?
The GG Network runs the deepest schedule, with Bounty Hunters events daily on GGPoker and Natural8 from $1.08 up to $320, plus a $750,000 guaranteed Sunday Main Event. Most run on a UTC clock, so convert before you register.
Is a PKO the same as a mystery bounty?
No. In a PKO the bounty amount is visible and compounds with each knockout. In a mystery bounty, prizes are drawn at random from a pool once the bounty phase starts, so the value of any knockout is unknown until it is revealed.
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