Progressive knockout (PKO)

A progressive knockout, usually shortened to PKO, is a bounty tournament in which eliminating a player pays you half of their bounty immediately and adds the other half to the bounty on your own head. It is the most strategically distinctive tournament format in common use.

How the money is split

Part of each entry fee goes to the regular prize pool and part becomes that player's starting bounty. When one player eliminates another, the winner collects half the eliminated player's total bounty in cash and the remaining half is added to their own bounty.

The word progressive describes the compounding. A player who knocks out several opponents accumulates an increasingly large bounty, which makes them worth more to eliminate than anyone else at the table. Late in a PKO, the bounty carried by the chip leader can be worth more than several pay jumps.

In a standard, non-progressive bounty event the entire bounty is paid out and nothing transfers, so bounties never grow. That difference is what the format name is pointing at.

Why correct play changes

Two effects dominate.

First, calling becomes much wider against a short stack whose bounty you can win. The bounty is only collectable if the opponent's whole stack is at risk and you cover them, so a call that would be marginally losing in chip terms can be clearly profitable once the cash bounty is counted. The shorter the opponent and the larger their bounty, the wider the call.

Second, covering matters enormously. Only a player who has the opponent covered can win their bounty, which means chips have value beyond their usual tournament function: being the bigger stack at the table is what makes the bounties around you collectable. This cuts against the normal ICM instinct to avoid confrontation, and it is the main reason PKO strategy diverges from regular tournament strategy.

The counterweight is that a growing bounty makes a player a target. Opponents will call wider against a big bounty, so the chip leader faces more all-ins with worse hands than they otherwise would.

Early versus late

Early on, bounties are small relative to stacks and the format plays close to a normal tournament. As stacks shorten relative to the bounties, the bounty component starts to outweigh the chips, and the right adjustments get larger. Near the money, a player must weigh three things at once: the pay jumps, the chip equity, and the cash bounties — which is why the format rewards players who can keep all three in view.

A practical warning

The common mistake is the opposite of the obvious one. Players know to call wider for a bounty and overcorrect, calling off large stacks to win a bounty that is small relative to what is being risked. The bounty is worth calling for when it is a meaningful fraction of the chips being put at risk — not simply because it exists.

Before you register

PKO structures vary. Check what proportion of the buy-in goes to bounties rather than the prize pool, whether the split is in fact fifty-fifty, and how re-entries and the final bounty are handled. Operators publish these details in the event structure, and they change the maths.