Preparing For A Blackjack Tournament
black jack strategy tournament
For those not in the know, let me briefly describe this tournament. Every month for the past 10 moths the Las Vegas Hilton has been holding a satellite tournament as part of its year long Million Dollar Tournament. The monthly prize pool is $56,000 with $26,000 for first place, $10,000 for second and decreasing amounts up to 19th place. More importantly, the top 18 semifinalists for each monthly tournament qualify for the April $1 Million Finals (there will be 200 contestants playing for the one million dollar first prize).
In order to become one of the top 18 semifinalists in a monthly tournament, you need to place first or second in the first, second and third rounds of play (i.e. the players who have the most and second most bankroll after 30 hands of play at each table advance to the next round). Every player starts a round with $5,000 in non-negotiable chips and the betting limits are $100 minimum to $5,000 maximum. Thirty hands are played per session. At the end of 30 hands the two players with the most bankroll are the table winners and they advance to the next round to play other table winners.
The entry fee for this tournament is $1,000, kind of steep for a blackjack tournament but the equity break even point is 165 players and so far none of the monthly tournaments have exceed this number of players (although I suspect this month there will be more than 165 players). Plus if you can make it to the finals you have a 1 in 200 shot to become a millionaire. I like those odds. Also there are several wild card drawings which gives you an outside chance to advance in the monthly rounds and hopefully into the finals.
black jack strategy tournament
Playing in a blackjack tournament is not the same as playing regular blackjack. The main difference is that in tournament play you are competing against your fellow table players rather than against a dealer. How you play your hands is important but what’s even more important is how you bet.
I prepared for this tournament by first carefully reviewing the rules. I know that each player will start with $5,000 worth of chips and there will be 30 hands dealt in rounds 1, 2 &3. More importantly the top 2 players that have the most bankroll after 30 hands will advance. I’ll have 30 seconds to determine how much to bet, and once I put my chips in the betting circle they can’t be changed. I also know that there will be countdown of all player chips after hand 25 in completed. The betting limits are $100 minimum to $5000 maximum bet and 6 decks of cards will be dealt using normal Las Vegas Hilton’s blackjack rules (dealer hit soft 17, doubling after pair splitting permitted, and late surrender is available).
After reviewing the 6-deck basic strategy to make sure I knew it cold I began reviewing my betting strategy. I read Wong’s Casino Tournament Strategy and also BJ Phantom’s Pocket Guide to Blackjack Tournaments. The latter has basic information for a beginner and is a book I’d recommend to someone who never entered a tournament before (even though I have experience in tournaments I still reviewed the book as a refresher). Most of my time, however, was spent reviewing the betting strategy in Wong’s book and working on the practice exercises.
I made up index cards with guidelines on how much to bet during the first 19 hands, then hand #25, then hand #29 and finally the last hand. The betting strategy at each of these points depends on whether you are ahead or behind and whether or not you bet first or not. It sounds complicated but once you read Wong’s book, you’ll be able to summarize the information on betting at these various hands on one side of an index card.
I flipped through my index cards a couple of times a day for about a week until I memorized the overall betting strategy. I then practiced eyeballing stacks of chips to determine their amount. I simply stacked a pile of clay chips on a table (to simulate a players’ bankroll), eyeballed them to estimate how much they were, then counted them to check how close I was to the right amount. After a little practice you would be amazed at how close you can come to estimating a player’s bankroll within 10-20%. This is important information to have prior to betting the last hand. Finally I used Wong’s Tournament Blackjack software to simulate a tournament with 5 other players. The software allows you to practice betting against 5 other players through 30 rounds (just like the Hilton tournament).
Even with all this preparation I’m a realist
and know that in the short span of 30 hands luck has a lot to do with whether
or not I end up as one of the 2 table winners. However, by reviewing my
betting strategies I believe I have a better shot at winning then most players
who really don’t understand how to bet in tournament play.
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