Bomb pots and the 7-2 bounty,
from the rules to the ledger.

In a bomb pot, every player at the table puts the same amount into the pot before the cards are dealt — an ante, usually a multiple of the big blind. There are no blinds and no betting before the flop. Everyone is dealt in, the flop comes straight away, and betting starts on the flop with a pot already several times larger than a normal opening pot, contested by every player at the table.

Live card rooms and home games typically run one per orbit, at an ante of around five big blinds, and the format is especially popular in Pot-Limit Omaha, where four hole cards make strong hands and big pots more likely. Online rooms run them on a timer, a hand count or a share of hands.^[1][2]

The double-board version deals two boards instead of one. The first board's flop, turn and river and the second board's come street by street, side by side, and betting happens once per street, on both boards together. At the showdown each pot is split in half: one half to the best hand on the first board, the other to the best hand on the second. A player who wins both boards scoops.

It is, in effect, running it twice decided before the betting rather than after it, and it settles the same way: each contested pot split between the boards, the odd chip to the first board, every hand shown. The deck sets the limit. Two boards with their burns take 16 cards, so a full table of Omaha — nine hands of four cards, 36 cards — fits exactly into 52, and bigger hands or more seats do not. A room has to fall back to one board when the deck cannot hold both, and say so.

Seven-deuce offsuit is the worst starting hand in Hold'em. The 7-2 game turns that into a side bet: a player who wins a pot holding seven-deuce collects a fixed bounty from every other player who was dealt into the hand. It rewards bluffing with the worst hand, and everyone at the table pays attention when it happens.

The rules that need writing down are more than they look. Must the winner show the seven-deuce to claim it? Does a suited seven-deuce count? Does winning a side pot count, or only the main pot? Is a split pot a win? Does a player who folded before the flop still pay? What does a player with fewer chips than the bounty pay? A room that leaves any of these to the moment will have arguments at the table and disputes in the support queue.

Bomb pots and the bounty exist for one reason: action. A bomb pot gives every player a flop and a pot worth playing for, which suits recreational players who find long stretches of folding dull. The 7-2 bounty gives players a reason to play a hand they would always fold, and a story to tell when it works. Both make a table feel livelier than its stakes.

For an operator, that matters most where liquidity is thin. A table that feels lively keeps players seated longer and draws others from the waitlist. Bomb pots also produce bigger pots, and rake is a share of the pot up to a cap, so a room's rake schedule should be checked against bomb-pot sized pots before the format is switched on.

The trade-off is that both formats move money faster. That is part of their appeal, and it is why an operator in a regulated market should treat bomb pots and the bounty as part of the game rules its licence covers, written down and reviewed like any other change to a game.

Online rooms and home-game platforms have adopted both formats in recent years, each with its own settings. Their published terms show how many different choices the rules leave open.

On PokerEnginePro, a table with bomb pots deals every Nth hand as one, at the ante the table sets. In that hand the engine posts the antes in place of the blinds: no blinds, no straddle, no blind positions. Every seat dealt in pays the ante, and a stack shorter than the ante is all in for what it has. The flop is dealt without a bet, and from the flop the first seat left of the button opens.

With two boards, the second is dealt street by street after the first, each with its own burn, and at the showdown each contested pot is split between the boards through the same settlement that runs a board twice — the odd chip to the first board, each award naming its board. A double board is never run again and never insured. Two boards are dealt only where the deck holds every hand and both boards with their burns; otherwise the hand is dealt on one board, and says so.

Because the engine deals bomb pots inside the ordinary hand, every game with a board gets them without a variant of its own: Hold'em, Omaha and their limits alike. The hand history exports the antes and both boards street by street, and the replay shows them as they were dealt.

PokerEnginePro writes every one of those rules down. The bounty is for winning the whole main pot — every share of it, on every board or run — with a two-card seven-deuce, offsuit unless the table counts suited too. A split is not a win, and a side pot does not count.

Every other seat dealt in pays, folded or not, from what it has left after the pot is settled, so a seat with nothing left pays nothing. The pot, its rake and every award are exactly what they would have been without the bounty, and the bounty stays out of what each player wagered, so rake shares and wagering totals are untouched. A winner who took the pot without a showdown has their hand shown for them, so a bounty is never left unclaimed.

The bounty settles in the same ledger transaction as the hand, as part of each seat's result. A second transaction, booked after the hand, could fail on its own and leave the table's stacks and the books disagreeing; one transaction cannot. The hand's own record says who paid whom.

A table's bomb pots and bounty are one setting: how often, the ante, one board or two, the bounty and whether suited counts. Tables can be opened with them from two ready-made templates, or changed later by the table's owner or the operator. The settings are checked against the table: the ante can be no more than the maximum buy-in, and the bounty applies only to two-card games. Because they move money, a change at a running real-money table needs a second approver.

Each market's rule pack says whether bomb pots and the bounty may be offered there, and the operator decides where it does offer them. The packs PokerEnginePro ships for the US states leave both switched off; the packs elsewhere allow them, and every pack is reviewed by the licensee's counsel before real money. Games without a board — Stud, Razz, the draw games and Badugi — have no bomb pots, and mixed-game tables offer none of the table extras.