WCOOP 2025 is running from September 7 and concluding on October 1. There are 378 tournaments on the recently released schedule, which adds up to guarantees of over $65 million in prizes.

For tournament players, the grind can often feel like a volatile rollercoaster of long hours and little downtime. One type of tournament that will definitely spice up your poker calendar during WCOOP are progressive knockout tournaments (PKOs).

There are 116 PKO tournaments on the WCOOP schedule, with buy-ins ranging from $5.50 to $10,300.

What are PKOs?

In PKO events, players are rewarded for busting their opponents by earning the bounty of the eliminated player. At first, this bounty is small, representing just half of the buy-in. You take half of the amount right then and add it to your bankroll, while the other half goes straight on to the bounty above your own head.

As more and more people are eliminated, bounties on the remaining players start to become large and provide an exhilarating boost to your bankroll if you manage to slay a giant. For more information on the strategy of these events, check out this article. Today’s focus is on the reasons for playing PKOs during WCOOP.

Winning Bounties

The main reason for playing PKO poker tournaments is that you enjoy the format. In PKOs, there’s much more emphasis on knocking out other players, which leads to some interesting and volatile play, especially during the early to mid-game when the reward of winning bounties often outweighs the risk of losing chips.

If you like aggressive poker with all-in confrontations, PKOs are a great choice for you.

Although PKOs technically have higher levels of variance due to the format and action-packed gameplay, it’s very possible to bust before the big money of a progressive KO while still earning a healthy income from bounties. This means that your bad runs will be cushioned by taking the scalps of others along the way. Plus, it’s a lot of fun.

A More Eventful Ride

Conventional tournaments are all about the destination. The journey can be fun, but it’s also easy to switch off when nothing much is going on. Progressive KOs solve this problem via the bounty system, which keeps players glued to the action.

Busting opponents is a crucial part of the game, so every hand could result in a prize as long as you have a covering stack. You might also find yourself watching hands that you aren’t even involved with so that you can see who gets knocked out and how much their bounty is worth.

Empowerment

The feeling of having a massive stack that covers every opponent on the table is even more exaggerated in progressive KOs. This is because, while you are threatening to bust your opponents and earn their bounties, they cannot do the same to you.

Running up a big stack, therefore, incentivizes you to play a pot with everyone else at the table, while simultaneously discouraging them from messing with you. This leads to the potential for snowballing your stack via stealing pots and gathering bounty after bounty from the desperate, dwindling short stacks around you.

An Exhilarating Late Game

If you are fortunate and/or skilled enough to make it to the final few tables of a large progressive KO tournament, you will find yourself immersed in the frantic action. Not only are your eyes set on that elusive top prize, but as you advance towards it, huge pay-out after huge pay-out is falling into your lap.

It’s an interesting dynamic during the late stages of a PKO, because you’ll have to balance chip accumulation, ICM and bounty hunting. When you reach the final table, pay jumps are much more significant and become the priority, so you’ll still get to experience that final table feeling.

Less Painful Bust-Outs

When I was twenty-one, I was a little lost in life. Yet to find a job or university degree that I could commit to; I was bouncing around between unsatisfying, low paying jobs. The only thing I felt any real passion for at that point in my life was poker. One night I was playing an MTT and had run deep. The next day, I was due to start my new job as an admin assistant for a student loans company. Dreading the demoralizing grind of another meaningless job, I decided that if I won the tournament or cashed really big, I would not be going to that new job. With about 16 players left and the top prize around $20,000, I was dealt pocket jacks and ended up all in against another large stack. He had AQo and spiked an Ace on the flop to eliminate me and my dreams of not going to work the next day. I had to settle for $1,100, which felt like a slap in the face.

Painful bust-outs like this one are common. The progressive KO format softens the blow in the form of a long trail of bounties leading up to the bust-out point. Even bubbling is less agonizing when you have already won four times the buy-in before that point.

Conclusion

If you have never tried progressive knockouts, I highly recommend giving them a whirl. The gameplay is gripping and the extra dynamic to the game can make even card-dead stretches interesting. See you at the tables!