[bustedromo]

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op, you do realize that as that list grows, the tournament becomes *more* profitable for the other players? not only does full tilt pay bounties in addition to the entry fees, but a lot of those guys kind of suck.

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I haven't crunched the numbers but it's not at all clear that your statement is true.

I think on average the FTP Pros are better than the average player in a high buy-in tournament. Adding better than average players to a tournament does not increase the expected value for the average player (whether the better than average players pay their buy-in or not).

The point of the free buy-in is to get these players to play the tournaments, supposedly because that somehow makes for a better tournament experience. My argument is that the presence of these players does not provide a better tournament experience for the average player.

The average player is interested in winning money. The average player does not care about the presence at his table of some stupid caricature avatar with a name he has never heard of that never participates in chat.

The bounties help at little, but first, most players are not playing to get their buy-in back, and second, the bounties are actually not as good as people here seem to think :

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Full Tilt Poker offers players the opportunity to earn a Bust-Out Bounty on any red pro playing in a scheduled real money tournament. These bounties do not apply to red pros playing in S&G tournaments. Players who bust a red pro from a tournament will receive a bounty matching their tournament buy-in, not including the tournament fee, up to $200. Players in tournaments with buy-ins of more than $200 will receive a bounty of $200 for any pro they bust. In the rare case when multiple players split a pot where a red pro busts, any player who wins a piece of the highest pot the pro was involved in will receive a full bounty for busting the red pro. If play in a qualifier tournament continues after all of the top prizes have been earned, a player will no longer be allowed to collect a bounty on any red pros that remain. For example, if a tournament offers World Series of Poker Main Event seats to the top five finishers, and a red pro is one of the last five players in the game, there will be no bounty awarded if he or she is busted from the game.

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