Blackjack Tournament Training

Blackjack Tournament Training - Part 8

What I want to cover this time are a few lessons I've learned while playing in Blackjack tournaments. No amount of practice and simulation can compare to actually being in the "heat of battle" and that's when you and I are going to make mistakes, so the important thing is to try and benefit from them.

The most recent mistake I made is almost inexcusable for a "pro", but at least it shows I'm human! It took place in the April installment of the Blackjack Tournament that we co-sponsor with Global Player Casino where I was facing "Ricky878" who was the latest challenger. Ricky and I had been playing a fairly conservative match, but he got ahead of me going into the final hand. Since I place a great deal of importance upon having the largest bankroll going into the last hand, I made a few big bets in the hands leading up to it, but lost most of them. So, I was well behind Ricky, but I was slated to bet last on the final hand and I still had a few tricks left.

I forget the exact numbers for hand #50 (you can see a replay of it at the Global Player Casino, although it wasn't posted as I write this), but as I recall, Ricky made a $120 bet and that left him with about $385 in unbet chips. I had $387.50 total and, because I had to bet at least $5, I'd be left with $382.50, so Ricky would win the match if we both lost the hand. I made a maximum bet of $200 and that was the "fatal" mistake. We both got decent hands dealt to us and I had a 'soft' hand, which was perfect, because I knew I'd have to double in order to have any hope of winning the match. I had an Ace-4, as I recall, went to double and was told by the software that I didn't have enough $$$ to do that! Most casinos allow you to double for less, but that wasn't the case here and I should have known that. That's a huge mistake. Like I said in the first part of this series, you must read the rules, understand them and - even more importantly - remember them at a time like this. All I could do at that point was to hit the hand and, of course, I pulled a 6 and had 21. Ricky also had 21 and we both won the hand, but had I been able to double with my remaining $177.50, I would have had a total of $775 to Ricky's $625.

Now I realize this looks a little like "Monday morning quarterbacking", but that's really not the case. You see, my mistake in betting $200 was even more serious than what I described, because it excluded me from being able to split a pair. In order to do that, you must have an amount equal to the original bet and it never entered my mind. What if I had been dealt a pair of 10s? I still would have had to get more $$$ on the table to beat Ricky, but that option was closed to me the minute I bet more than half of my chips. That's what I'm really kicking myself over. There may, indeed, be times when you have to bet all your chips, but if you don't, you'll probably be better off betting less than half your chips so that the option to either split pairs or double is open to you. I guarantee you this: I learned my lesson with this little episode!

Another thing I've learned recently came from my participation in the Blackjack tournament held in April at Bally's Casino in Tunica, Mississippi. In this tourney, the first two rounds of play are simply a matter of accumulating as many chips as possible, so you're not trying to beat the other players at your table. This format requires you to do some wild-ass gambling; there's no other word for it. We each get $1000 in play-money to play 25 hands and the second round is the same. The 35 players with the most $$$ move to the semi-final round, which is run in a table-winner format (one of six moves forward) and those six players end "in the money" at the final table.

With 200 players entered, it was a reasonable expectation that it would take about $4500 in total winnings to make the cut. I've talked about this before, back in Part 7 and I spent a lot of time examining various betting "schemes" that would help me reach my personal goal of $5000 for the two rounds of play. It's not an easy problem to solve. Obviously, if I could develop some method of play that would allow me to make a $3000 profit in 50 hands of Blackjack, I certainly wouldn't have to enter a tournament to make a living; I could just sit down at any table and get up an hour later, $3000 richer. No, this is outright gambling, but I really feel it can be quantified to some degree. First of all, I think it's fair to say that you have to be lucky and it's difficult to measure luck, although it's not impossible.

What I did was crunch some numbers on a program called "Blackjack Risk Manager" (BJRM) that I reviewed in an article called "Letter to An Ex-counter", which is in the archives on this page, just over to your right a bit. This program allows you to make a wide variety of bankroll calculations, like what's my risk of ruin at a particular game, if I bet $5-$100 a hand, according to the count and play 10,000 hands? Since BJRM is made for longer periods of play than 50 hands, I had to do some extrapolating, but I basically got what I wanted from it.

What I wanted to calculate was the average bet size I'd need to turn $1000 into $2500 in 25 hands of play, given the type of game I'd be playing (6 decks, H17, Doa2, das, etc.). I chose 25 hands, rather than 50 hands, because I wanted to break my effort into two distinct parts: hit the first goal, and then worry about the second goal later. In other words, get halfway there in the first round, then just do it one more time and, bada-bing, I'm qualified. That was the "fatal" flaw in this idea, as you'll see. Blackjack Risk Manager told me that a bet spread of $50-$600 in 25 hands of play had a 0.86% chance of reaching my goal and a 27.11% chance of losing it all. That wasn't very impressive, but you have to remember that BJRM thinks I'm playing like a "regular" counter, where my bet is changed only with the count. But in a tournament, the count is of little value so the figures BJRM was giving me were somewhat flawed.

I'll make a long story short and tell you that I finally settled on an average bet size of $200, which is, of course, madness when you have only $1000 as a bankroll. But that's what it takes, so my plan was to bet $200 on the first hand and go up by $50 if I won and go down by $50 if I lost. Yes, I fully realize that whether I won or lost the previous hand has no effect on the next hand, but it does affect my bankroll. If I have $1000, bet $200 and win, I now have a total of $1200, so betting $250 doesn't scare me as much from a "risk of ruin" point of view, but if I have $1000, bet $200 and lose, now I have only $800 and betting $150 is better than betting $200. (Heavens! I sound like a progressionist.) Anyway, I decided to go up by $50 after a win and go down by $50 after a loss, up to a maximum bet of $400 and down to a minimum bet of $50, which should give me an average bet of about $200 in the 25 hands of play.

Well, I finished the first round in 16th place, with a total of $2750, right where I wanted to be. My mistake came at about hand # 21 or 22 in the first round when I got to $3000 and cut back the size of my bets that were, at the time, $400. Having reached my goal, I just didn't want to lose 2 or 3 big bets and drop back to $1500, or less. Consequently, I cut my bets back to $200 or $250 and finished at $2750, as I mentioned. What I should have done was stick with my plan, which called for a maximum bet of $400 as long as I was winning. This isn't "Monday morning quarterbacking" either, because in the last three hands, I won one, lost one and pushed one, so it all came out even, but I changed a well-thought out plan at the spur of the moment and that's dumb. I remember this from my days as a soldier: "Plan your work, then work your plan." Well, I didn't but I still felt pretty good going into round 2 with a total of $2750, considering that 86 of the 200 players had ended round 1 with $0. Now remember that we are given another $1000 in round 2 and, while you have to bet at least $5 on each hand, I figured I was at $3750 at that point, so I'd have to make "only" $1250 in the second round and I'd be in the semi-finals.

The first thing I did was to basically throw my whole plan out the window and bet just $50 per hand, rather than starting with a $200 bet and working my "progression". That wasn't all bad, because the dealer was hotter than a two-dollar pistol, as we used to say. In the 25 hands, good ol' Dealer Denny started with a blackjack, had 4 more and wiped the floor with us. Anyway, I busted out trying to win "only" $1500 and ended with $2750. The cut-off point was $4677. I'm not sure that even if I had stayed with my plan the outcome in round 2 would have been any different, but I still think I should have stuck with my plan in round 1, because there may have been a point where I started "protecting" my profit, so I could have cost myself some $$$. When it's going your way, just go with it is probably the lesson here, especially if you're gambling with play money! An interesting side note is that Ken Smith of www.blackjackinfo.com fame ended round 1 with $0, but qualified with about $4800. He did it by betting his entire $1000 on the first hand of round 2 and sticking with it until he got to his goal. King of the Kamikazes!

I always try to learn from mistakes that cost me $$$ and both of these were good lessons.

I'll see you here next time.

Blackjack Tournament Training - Part 8

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