$100,000 bounty won at the Wynn
What may have been the biggest single bounty in poker was won last night in the 'Mystery Bounty' event.
Live poker has been unable to replicate the success of PKO tournaments for logistical reasons, but the 'Mystery Bounty' event taking place at the Wynn might be the next best thing.
It is a $1,600 tournament where the bounty on each player is unknown. Most of them are $500 but a handful are really high, the biggest one being $100,000.
Each time a player is eliminated the person who bust them takes a ticket over to a tombola and draws a bounty at random. Most players, like Ben 'Spraggy' Spragg won the minimum:
I got video. It was great. https://t.co/UyOKynhnV5 pic.twitter.com/49zvIM1MHn
— Brad Owen (@TheBradOwen) July 6, 2021
However, one player took down the biggest bounty of them all. Jay Kovoor of New Jersey somehow looked barely happier than Spraggy for this bounty worth $100,000:
The $100k prize is off the board in @WynnPoker $1,600 Mystery Bounty. Only about 35 envelopes remained when Jay Kovoor from New Jersey selected the lucky envelope after busting tournament in 55th place for $5,210.
Two $25k envelopes still up for grabs!https://t.co/ytI8jhK9MX pic.twitter.com/BSLRavpgY9
— PokerNews (@PokerNews) July 7, 2021
He finished in 55th place for $5,210 in payout money, but the bounty means he took home more than third place prize money. The eventual winner (which is being decided at the time of writing) will take home $217,948 and any bounties they captured.
If this format looks familiar, the World Series of Poker were going to do it in 2020 before the pandemic ended any chances of that happening. A Mystery Bounty event has not found its way onto the 2021 WSOP schedule, but maybe it will in 2020 and other live festivals now that this offering from the Wynn appears to have gone down very well.
Do you like the look of this format? Let us know in the comments: