Poker Strategy 
/ Short-Stacked Shamus / 09 February 2012 / Leave a Comment 
Knocking out an opponent in a tournament sure feels good, but does it always pack that much of a punch to do so?
In a bounty tournament, it might seem worth going out of our way in certain instances to try to score a knockout. But in a non-bounty tournament should we ever be going out of our way to eliminate someone?
So-called "bounty" or "knockout" tournaments have become increasingly popular over recent years, especially when it comes to online poker. These are tourneys for which part of the prize pool is set aside to reward players with a certain amount for eliminating an opponent along the way, with the remainder going to the top finishers as in non-bounty tourneys. Evidence of the increasing popularity of such events is the addition of a non-bracelet "bounty" tourney to the 2012 WSOP schedule in which cash prizes will be awarded to players eliminating opponents who have won WSOP bracelets in the past.
Such a format often will affect a player's strategy, perhaps encouraging one to seek opportunities to eliminate opponents where one wouldn't otherwise in order to secure bounties. After all, depending on how the payouts are scheduled, it is often possible to collect enough bounties to turn a profit in a bounty tournament without even surviving into the money.
The emergence of these bounty tourneys invites us to think about the inherent value of eliminating opponents even when there are no bounties for doing so. We know there exists some value for us whenever a player is knocked out in a tournament, as that occurrence always moves us one step closer to the cash or, if the bubble has already burst, one spot higher on the payout schedule. But how valuable is it, really, to eliminate an opponent during the pre-bubble -- i.e., early and middle stages -- of a tournament?
In a bounty tournament, it might seem worth going out of our way in certain instances to try to score a knockout. But in a non-bounty tournament should we ever be going out of our way to eliminate someone?
Until relatively recently, it was sometimes suggested by tourney pros and other strategists that in freeze-out tourneys with standard payout schedules, eliminating an opponent was always to be considered a positive play. Such thinking would encourage players with above-average stacks to call all-in shoves by short-stacked opponents even with so-so holdings in the hopes of reducing the field by one.
However, as multi-table tournaments grew into the most popular form of poker over the last decade a more sophisticated approach to such a question developed, with the resulting advice often suggesting that in fact it often is not worth it to go out of our way to try to eliminate an opponent, particularly during the early stages but also later on as well.
By "going out of our way" I mean playing a hand in a way that is different than how we would normally play it if not for the prospect of eliminating a player. Say the blinds are 100/200 (no antes yet) and a late-position player shoves for 1,000. It folds to us in the big blind where we have a hand like Qd-7c.
Normally we'd toss such a hand away in the face of a 5x raise without a second thought, but say we have a healthy stack of 7,500 and find ourselves considering whether or not to gamble, with the possibility of knocking out the short-stacked player having entered into our thinking as another factor worth considering.
Now every situation is unique -- perhaps that's Jason Mercier doing the shoving and knocking him out would be an especially positive play in terms of improving our chances of succeeding at the table. Then again, giving Mercier a "courtesy double-up" would be especially bad not just for us but for everyone else, too.
But looking at the situation in a less specific way, calling in such spots is overall a very poor play and should generally be avoided. Mike Caro once made this point by quantifying the reward for eliminating a player and comparing that to what we're risking to make the call. The risk is easy to determine -- in my example, it would be committing 800 more chips to call. The reward of adding 1,300 chips for taking that risk is easy to calculate, too. But what extra reward is there for eliminating an opponent, too?
According to Caro, not much. Especially if we are early in the tournament, but really even later, too. That's because the reward we get for knocking out a player isn't just ours -- it is also shared by everyone else in the tournament!
As Caro points out, "whatever value eliminating this player adds to the expectations of all players, you... will profit only the same as the others will." In other words, if there are 51 players left, you're splitting the "reward" of knocking out your opponent with everyone else -- i.e., you're getting only 1/50th of whatever value that has.
Thus if you weren't normally going to call a 5x raise with Qd-7c, the fact that you might knock out an opponent by doing so shouldn't be encouraging you to act otherwise.
All is situation-dependent, of course, and oftentimes a late-position push by a short stack can indicate an especially wide range that might make calling with an average starting hand correct. But if this isn't a bounty tournament, don't make a marginal call just to try to reduce the field by one, particularly early on. Because while knocking someone out might feel good, the extra benefit for doing so usually doesn't translate into much more value for us.
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