BetRivers Poker Gobbleknocker 2026: 37 Bounty Events, $250K+ Guaranteed and Free Tickets Before It Starts

Thanksgiving week has quietly turned into one of the best stretches of the year for regulated online poker in the US, and BetRivers Poker Gobbleknocker 2026 is a big reason why. The bounty-only series is back for its second year. It’s bigger than the first one, it starts earlier, and it now spreads across two knockout formats instead of one.

The short version: 37 tournaments, more than $250,000 in guarantees, November 22–29, and every single event pays you for knocking people out. There’s also a free-ticket promotion running the week before. If you already play MTTs on BetRivers, you can earn your way in without changing a thing about how you play.

Here’s what’s on the schedule, which events are worth circling, and how to think about the two bounty formats if you’re newer to them.

Gobbleknocker 2026 at a glance

• Ticket qualifiers: Road to the Gobbleknocker, Nov 15–21
• Main series: Nov 22–29 (first event 5:05 p.m. ET Sunday; last 10:05 p.m. ET the following Sunday)
• Events: 37, all knockouts (PKO or Mystery Bounty)
• Guarantees: $250,000+
• Biggest prize pool: $200 PKO Main Event, $25,000 GTD
• Who can play: eligible players in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Delaware and West Virginia
• Opt-in: not needed for any of the promotions

How Gobbleknocker 2026 Compares With Last Year

BetRivers launched the Gobbleknocker in late 2025 as a holiday series built only around bounties. The 2026 edition keeps that idea but changes almost everything else.

	Gobbleknocker 2025	Gobbleknocker 2026
Dates	Nov 28 – Dec 7 (started Black Friday)	Nov 22 – 29 (ends the Sunday after Thanksgiving)
Length	10 days	8 days
Events	26	37
Guarantees	$200,000+	$250,000+
Formats	PKO only	PKO + Mystery Bounty

That’s 11 more events packed into two fewer days, so there’s more action each night. The schedule also moved forward a week, which means the series now covers Thanksgiving itself (Thursday, Nov 26) and Black Friday instead of starting on them. For many recreational players, those are the days they actually have time to sit down for a long session.

Step One: Road to the Gobbleknocker (Nov 15–21)

The week before the series is basically a loyalty reward for players who are already grinding. Here’s how it works:

• Play real-money MTTs with a buy-in of $1 or more. Entries and re-entries both count.
• Every two qualifying entries in the same tier earn one draw entry (rounded down, with no cap).
• The three tiers are Low (1–9.99), Medium (10–49.99) and High ($50+). You can’t combine tiers.
• Each tier’s draw gives out $2,500 in Gobbleknocker tickets, so $7,500 and 1,400+ tickets are handed out in total. You can win more than once in a tier.
• Tickets only work in Gobbleknocker events and expire Nov 29 at 11:59 p.m. ET.

The practical angle: 1,400 tickets from a $7,500 pool works out to roughly $5 per ticket on average. In other words, most prizes are small, entry-level seats rather than Main Event packages. For micro-stakes players that’s great news, because it means lots of winners. The tier rule is the detail people miss. If you play one $5 tournament and one $11 tournament, those are two different tiers and you earn nothing. Two $5 games earns you an entry. So if you have a “home” stake, spend the week there.

The Gobbleknocker 2026 Schedule: Events With $10K+ Guarantees

BetRivers has published the full 37-event schedule in the poker client lobby. These are the ten tournaments with guarantees of $10,000 or more. All times are Eastern.

Date	Time (ET)	Event	Buy-in	GTD	Format
Sun Nov 22	5:05 p.m.	#1 Monster Big and Small Mystery	$50	$10,000	Mystery
Sun Nov 22	7:05 p.m.	#3 Deepstack Mystery (Flat Bounties)	$200	$20,000	Mystery
Mon Nov 23	7:05 p.m.	#7 Monsterstack Mystery (Flat Bounties)	$100	$10,000	Mystery
Tue Nov 24	7:05 p.m.	#11 Deepstack PKO 6-Max	$200	$14,000	PKO
Wed Nov 25	8:05 p.m.	#16 Deepstack PKO	$100	$10,000	PKO
Thu Nov 26	7:05 p.m.	#19 Gobbleknocker PKO	$200	$14,000	PKO
Fri Nov 27	8:05 p.m.	#24 Friday Fight Club 6-Max	$100	$10,000	PKO
Sat Nov 28	7:05 p.m.	#28 Big or Small Mystery	$100	$10,000	Mystery
Sun Nov 29	6:05 p.m.	#33 Mystery Bounty Main Event	$100	$20,000	Mystery
Sun Nov 29	8:05 p.m.	#35 PKO Main Event	$200	$25,000	PKO

Bounty sizes, late registration windows and details of the other 27 events haven’t been announced publicly yet. Check the BetRivers lobby for those.

If you add these ten up, they account for $143,000, or a bit more than half of the total guarantee. That leaves around $107,000 or more spread across the remaining 27 events, which will be the lower buy-in and side tournaments. For a player with a 200–500 bankroll, those smaller events are probably where most of your volume should go. Taking a shot at one or two of the bigger events is fine as an occasional splurge.

The Two Main Events on Sunday, November 29

Closing Sunday has both headliners two hours apart. The 100MysteryBountyMainEvent(20K GTD) starts at 6:05 p.m., and the 200PKOMainEvent(25K GTD), the largest guarantee of the series, starts at 8:05 p.m. If late registration on the Mystery event is generous, you could realistically play both. Just be honest with yourself about whether you can focus on two deep runs at the same time on the last night of a long week.

Also worth noting is #19 Gobbleknocker PKO on Thanksgiving night. Holiday-night fields tend to have more casual players who sit down after dinner. A $200 buy-in with only a $14K guarantee could turn out to be one of the better-value spots on the whole schedule.

PKO vs Mystery Bounty: What Actually Changes at the Table

Every Gobbleknocker event is a knockout, but these two formats ask you to make different decisions.

Progressive Knockout (PKO)

Everyone starts with a bounty on their head. When you bust someone, part of their bounty goes straight into your account as cash, and the rest is added to your bounty. Big stacks become bigger targets as the tournament goes on.

• Call wider against covered players with big bounties. The bounty is extra money in the pot, so you need less equity to call an all-in.
• Don’t overdo it early. In the first levels, bounties are small compared to stacks, so play close to normal tournament poker.
• Your own stack size matters. When you cover the table, you can apply pressure because opponents know shoving into you just pays you.

Mystery Bounty

Bounties don’t exist at the start. They only become live after a set point later in the tournament, which is usually around the money or a certain level. After that, every knockout earns a randomly drawn bounty, which could be small or could be the top prize.

• The early phase is just a normal freezeout-style tournament. Survival and chip building matter more than chasing knockouts.
• Once bounties are live, every bust has the same expected value no matter who you knock out, so short stacks are just as valuable to eliminate as big stacks.
• “Flat Bounties” (Events #3 and #7) suggests the bounty prizes are more evenly sized. That means less lottery and more steady value. “Big and Small” and “Big or Small” events sound like they have a wider spread between bounties.

The simple takeaway for beginners: PKOs reward aggression all the way through. Mystery Bounties reward patience first and aggression later.

Extra Value: Ticket Punch and Gordon’s Final Mystery

Gobbleknocker Ticket Punch (Daily, Nov 22–29)

Every knockout in a Gobbleknocker event earns one draw entry, up to five per day. Knockouts from different tournaments on the same day count together. In PKOs every bust counts. In Mystery Bounty events, only busts after the bounty phase begins count. Each day’s draw awards 55 satellite tickets worth $500 in total, and entries don’t carry over to the next day. Over eight days, that’s about $4,000 in satellite tickets.

Gordon’s Final Mystery

This is the “thanks for playing all week” bonus. Play in at least eight different series MTTs between Nov 22 and 29 (re-entries in the same event only count once; satellites, cash games and freerolls don’t count) and you get one $20 ticket to a Mystery Bounty on Sunday, December 6 at 7:05 p.m. ET, with a $4,500 guarantee plus $500 added. Anyone eligible can also buy in directly for $20.

The practical angle: Eight events over eight days is just one tournament a night. If you’re already planning to play the series, it’s an easy free $20 ticket. The $500 added money also gives that final tournament some extra value.

Who Can Play, and a Note for International Readers

BetRivers Poker is a state-licensed US operator. It shares player pools across Pennsylvania, Michigan, Delaware and West Virginia. In Delaware and West Virginia, it’s currently the only regulated online poker option. You have to be physically located in one of those states to play, and geolocation checks are enforced.

If you’re reading from outside those four states, whether that’s India, the UK, Canada or anywhere else, you won’t be able to play this series. It’s still worth following, though. Mixing PKO and Mystery Bounty formats in one holiday series is a structure more operators are copying, and the strategy ideas above apply to bounty events on any site.

Our Take

The 2026 Gobbleknocker isn’t trying to be the biggest series of the year. The BetRivers Poker Championship back in September and October had a much larger guarantee. What the Gobbleknocker does well is fit a lot of action into a short holiday window. It lets regular players earn their way in for free, and it gives you a reason to play every night without big buy-ins. If you’re in PA, MI, DE or WV, start building Road to the Gobbleknocker entries in your usual tier from November 15, then plan around Thanksgiving night and the closing Sunday.

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