The Monthly Mystery on WePlay: $15,000 once a month

Of the $66 buy-in, $30 goes to the prize pool, $30 goes to the mystery bounties and $6 is WePlay's fee, as the WePlay lobby lists it. The $15,000 guarantee covers the prize pool and the bounties together.

$30 of every buy-in goes into the bounty pool. Early on, a knockout pays nothing extra: the lobby lists the mystery bounty phase as starting once the prize zone is reached, when everyone left is in the money. From then on every knockout wins a bounty from the pool, and as in every mystery bounty you see what it is worth when you win it.

That makes it two tournaments in one. Before the money it plays like any deep-stacked tournament, where chips are all that count. After the money every all-in you win against a player you cover pays a bounty on top of the climb up the prize list. How we play bounty tournaments covers the progressive kind, which pays from the first hand.

The buy-in is $66, and the Monthly Mystery also takes tickets: the lobby shows "Ticket Entry: Available". The Sunday Showdown pays some of its prizes as $66 Monthly Mystery tickets, five of them when we looked, so a good Sunday can pay your seat for the month.

Twenty-three hours before the start, 64 players had registered. At $60 each into the prize pool and the bounties, that is $3,840 of the players' own money towards a $15,000 guarantee, and the guarantee is paid whatever the final field. Our arithmetic: it takes 250 entries before the players' money covers the guarantee on its own. Below that, the difference is money WePlay adds, which players call overlay.

At that point the lobby showed ten places paid, from $3,793.20 for first to $366.24 for tenth. The list changes with every entry until registration closes.

• Register before the start. Everyone registered before late registration begins gets 4,000 extra chips, 24,000 instead of 20,000.
• Play the early hours for chips. Until the money a knockout pays nothing extra, and after it the big stacks collect the most bounties, because you can only knock out a player you cover.
• Decide how many re-entries you allow yourself before you sit down. Unlimited re-entry helps after a bad start and costs a lot when it becomes a habit.
• Plan for a long night. The levels are 8 minutes and the tables seat seven, with a break at 55 minutes past every hour.