Tourney "Side bets" for year-end deep stack tournament (1 Viewer)

[jshark]

Hello,

I run a poker league that meets monthly, pays a monthly league fee and earns points, which culminates in a "free roll" deep stack tournament every December.

I have always had fun add-ons/side bets (or whatever you want to call them... ) that generate a bit of a bigger pot. Typically charge 10 dollars per side game, half of which goes to the winner of the side game and half into the main pot for the tournament. Examples of these are:

Mystery Bounty - winner knocks out the mystery bounty (that my wife knows who it is ahead of time and helps us)
Second chance - if a certain minimum number of people participate (and the minimum is always met on this) the first one to get KO'd gets a free second rebuy
Bad beat jackpot - set a threshold for a hand that qualifies and pay out if the first one that hits.. issue is, in 5-6 years of doing this no one has ever hit. It's one I'd like to replace

I have one more that I don't even remember currently. It's all boxed up for now.

So, along these lines, are there any ideas anyone has implemented to spice up a 'special' tournament?

 

[rustycheerio]

for your second chance rule, what's preventing people from shipping all in first hand, with this rule present?

 

[jshark]

for your second chance rule, what's preventing people from shipping all in first hand, with this rule present?

This has never happened and not a concern.

The starting chips are our normal starting chip stack throughout the season (15k) plus bonus chips won throughout the season based on how you finished each month (so starting stacks range from like 20k to around 40k). The second chance stack is a straight 15k. So no one is gonna risk their starting stack first hand for the possibility of getting 15k as a reward for it. It's a popular 'side game' that has never affected action or frankly, never resulted in that person even cashing. There are too many chips in play for 15k to really be much of a threat, but it is a lottery ticket of sorts if you're the unlucky first one out. It's fun and causes no issues.