The 2023 Bounty Hunters Series is in full swing. Dozens of daily tournaments, a leaderboard to track your knockouts that pays hearty bonuses on a daily basis, and millions of dollars in guaranteed prize pools. With so many different ways to participate and win a share, there were bound to be a multitude of great stories. Just 10 days into the series, there have already been hundreds of winners and millions in prizes over these events and maybe you’re one of them.
Maybe you’re having a week like ‘Olavo Carvalho’ who took down the Bounty Hunters Sunday Main Event and earned $55,270.88 as the last man standing. Maybe you were playing at an insanely high level like “AKmakii’, the victor of the $525 buy-in Bounty Hunters HR Main Event this past weekend, and turned the buy-in into $113,184.71. Regardless of how you did in any of these events, we all look to the future and winning a life-changing amount, and more importantly, etching our names in the annals of poker lore, confirming our place amongst the pros.
We’ve all dreamed of hitting a big score, winning that one hand on the final card to get rich, or living the dream from a small buy-in to megabucks like Chris Moneymaker in 2003. It lives as a pipedream, most of us realizing that a win like that is rare enough that it will never grace our lives, but still, we hold out hope – it has to happen to someone, right? And this past weekend, we all learned that you should ‘never say never’.
MYSTERY BOUNTY Mini Main
On Monday, October 23rd, day 2 of the MYSTERY BOUNTY Mini Main was held. This tournament, the first BIG event of the Bounty Hunter Series, had nearly 100 Day 1’s for players to choose from. With Day 2 being an accumulator, your chips from every Day 1 you survive are added together, multiple players chose to buy in on multiple day 1’s as everyone attempted to survive to see Day 2, the money, and the bounties.
The $2,000,000 guarantee for this tournament was sure to garner the attention of players from everywhere. The $25 buy-in ensured that everyone was able to get in on the action and the $200,000 top Mystery Bounty brought out anyone lurking in the shadows. When the final day 1 ended, a total of 107,713 players had spent the $25 to get in on the action for this Mini Main Event and the prize pool swelled to an amazing $2,563,569.40, half of which was in bounties. From those, just 10,238 survived to Day 2, which is a big enough field that if it was the WSOP Main Event, it would be the largest Main Event ever.
Day 2 took 26 hours to run to completion, including the extended overnight break leading up to the final table playing. While 9 players vied for the championship, it was ‘DinPP’ who claimed the victory and earned the #1 spot worth $76,368.94 plus an additional $576 in bounties. While the bounty total may not seem like much, it was the 2nd highest won by any player at the final table. Ninth place finisher, ‘Vugia68’ earned the most in bounties from the final 9 with $1,567.60.
All the players in this massive event deserve a hearty congratulations, as even the first to be KOed, ‘nlaw’, still navigated their way through a 100,000+ player tournament to finish in the money.
The MYSTERY BOUNTY Player
There is one player, who amongst the field, stands out, taller than the rest. A player, who collected less than a dozen bounties. A player who, while they finished in the top 15% of the field, only earned $126.20 for their finish. A player from Brazil. The player, ‘homempeixe777’, chose to enter the tournament and managed to, on their first attempt, survive to Day 2. They had made the money. At this point, many players may have thought it a good idea to buy-in to a second Day 1 to boost their Day 2 starting stack, as many did. Others would have done so multiple times. But ‘homemepeixe777’ is not most players.
Sticking with the stack they had earned, ‘homempeixe777’ began day 2 with the original, single buy-in starting stack and a lot of faith in their ability. The day played on and the field got smaller but ‘homempeixe777’ was still there. Getting smaller and smaller. From the starting 10,238 down to 1,510. Sadly, it was at this point that ‘homempeixe777’ was finally beaten. Finishing 1,509th from 107,713 runners is an amazing showing for any poker player. For the effort, ‘homempeixe777’ earned $126.20, just over 5 times the buy-in which is a great ROI in almost anything in 24 hours.
Now surely you’re wondering why mention this player at all. For a poker tournament, 5x isn’t that great, certainly not when the top place was worth over $75K and a top 15% finish is certainly not something to brag about. So why all the hullabaloo?
While ‘homempeixe777’ ran well and finished respectably, their big accomplishment was finding the biggest mystery bounty!
In the small blind, ‘homempeixe777’ looked down at A-Q off. The action folded around to the button, ‘Akabane70’ who raised 2.5BB. ‘homempeixe777’ re-upped it to a total of 8.5 bigs, which was just over half of ‘Akabane70’ starting stack. After thinking about it for a few seconds, ‘Akabane70’ jammed for a further 9.5 Big Blinds which was called after a moment by ‘homempeixe777’. With the tournament on the line, ‘Akabane70’ tabled pocket Jacks, hearts and spades, for a slight edge. If the Jacks held, ‘Akabane70’ would be up to almost 40 blinds, enough to make a run. If not, that would be the end. The flop came down K-Q-7 with 2 hearts, pushing ‘homempeixe777’ into the lead and leaving ‘Akabane70’ praying for one of the 2 Jacks or running hearts. The 5 of clubs on the turn killed the flush option and a 4 on the river was clean for ‘homempeixe777’, leaving him to scoop the pot into his stack now worth over 100 Big Blinds. ‘Akabane70 was removed from the table while a Chest appeared for ‘homempeixe777’. With a quick key turn and a shake, and the chest was revealed to be golden. A rare opportunity to earn a bit more from the KO. The golden chest was opened to reveal the grand prize, $200,000!
‘homempeixe777’ had just won the biggest bounty in the tournament, the $200,000 top prize for a total ROI of over 8,000! And it was all done from just a single buy-in from a single run in a single Day 1.
From just $25, ‘homempeixe777’ had just accomplished what so many of us strive for, a life-changing amount of money for doing something you love. It is important to remember that this is a rare occurrence, but it does happen. We sincerely do hope that it happens to everyone at least once (ideally starting with me), but until then, we wish all the best, including health and happiness to ‘homempeixe777’. We hope you enjoy your newfound wealth and that it changes everything for the better.
From $25 to $200,000…what a Monday!
You can watch the hand play out here!
