It had never been done before, but after a little over two weeks of knockout poker, the 888poker Mystery Bounty Festival games finished slightly ahead of their guarantee. With thirty numbered events (plus the Main Event) across the two-week series, it began with just over $1.1 million guaranteed in the big events and more than $2 million, including side events.
When the dust settled on entries, almost $1.2 million was collected in the big games — an increase of more than $50k on guarantees across the main series events. Almost two-thirds of the events beat their guarantees, with 12 of the 31 tracked games missing their pre-series promises.
While there were 12 missed guarantees in this series, the damage was pretty minimal in the end, with a bit more than $30k in overlay requiring payout. That was easily offset by more than $100k in fees collected, so the series looks to be in the green for 888poker.
Almost 34,000 entries were recorded across the big games, with almost 10k of that coming from rebuys. While the results didn’t blow through the guarantees overall, the final results show the operator was on-par with its pre-series estimates.
2023 888poker Mystery Bounty Results Summary
| Beat Gtd | 19 |
| Missed Gtd | 12 |
| Total Gtd | $2,123,000 |
| Total Prizes | $2,208,250 |
| Total Entries | 33,893 |
| Entries | 24,277 |
| Rebuys | 9616 |
Everyone Loves a Mystery
The rapid rise of the Mystery Bounty (MB) format is no mystery to explain — the format offers all the appeals of regular poker, with the added bonus of the chance at massive bounty prizes. With the chance to win as much as $30k from a single bounty in this series, you don’t need Scooby and the Gang to solve this one.
The results for this first-ever all-_Mystery Bounty_ series prove the point. More than 24,000 unique entries in the series clearly show that players on 888poker like the Mystery format and are willing to come out in droves for it. That was not much of a surprise, however, with daily Mystery games seeing some of the biggest daily entry numbers on the site.
The biggest game of the whole series by entries was the game that kicked it all off — MB Festival #01: Mystery Bounty Opening. The $11 event had $20k guaranteed, and it saw 1764 entries with 817 rebuys for a total of 2581 when registration closed. That also allowed the opening game to take the top spot for an increase on the guarantee in this series, with nearly 30% extra in the prize pool.
That was more than 200 entries bigger than the second-best game, MB Festival #13. This was another $11 tournament with $20k guaranteed, and it saw 2374 total runners, including rebuys, giving it a healthy 19% extra in prizes.
In total, six games had more than 2k entries and rebuys when the dust settled. A further ten events had at least 1000 total entries, so this series showed pretty clearly just how much interest there is in the format.
Main Event Goes Big
The pinnacle of any poker tournament series is always the Main Event. It is almost always designed as the biggest tournament of the series, and a Main Event title usually comes with a bit more prestige than other wins.
The MB format changed nothing, with the Main Event promising $300k in prizes, the biggest guarantee of the whole series. However, that proved to be an underestimate when the field capped 2000 total entries for a total prize pool of $310k.
There were two other tournaments with more than $100k to play for. MB Festival #18 crushed its $150k guarantee with $182k in total prizes, while MB Festival #03 had $120k to play for when it missed its guarantee by about 14%.
Big Guarantee Boosts Bracket the Series
There were a few games that really crushed the pre-series guarantees. Regarding total dollar value, the aforementioned MB Festival #18 tops the list with $32k extra over its $150k guarantee. The Main Event came second in this category with a bit more than $10k extra, while the opening game ended up with almost $6k more than its $20k promise.
That opening game leads the list for the biggest percentage increase on the guarantee. It had nearly 30% extra to play for, but the series’ final game, MB Festival #30, also had more than 25% extra in its $15k prize pool. Third place by percent goes to the winner by dollars, #18, with its $32k extra coming out to 21.33% over the guarantee.
In the end, while not all the games pushed past their guarantees, it was clearly a win for the operator and players. The few games that did overlay were easily covered by fees, with fees from the two biggest prize pool games covering the overlay by themselves.
More than 24,000 unique entries across the series clearly show the appetite for online Mystery Bounty games. While this was the first-ever all-mystery series, it seems pretty certain it will not be the last.
