Often, this means surrendering when you normally wouldn’t and hoping for a dealer blackjack.

All gambling tournaments-they go on for everything from baccarat to roulette to craps to blackjack and even slot machines-share the same contrarian goal: You are not trying to beat the dealer or the machine you’re trying to end up with more chips than the other players. Such situations unfold often enough that tournaments turn the notion of casino gaming on its head. But then that’s the problem with tournament blackjack dealers: They don’t always win when you want them to. In that scenario, I would have lost my tiny bet and the guy to my right, with whom I was contending for advancement, would have been hosed for his large one. His final hand went from 10 to 12 to 16 to 26. We would have gotten a shot at the jackpot had the dealer’s cards held up at the end. Playing for cash, these would have looked like boneheaded plays, but in tournament blackjack they were correct and statistically sound under the specific circumstances. He did not try to throttle me when I split 10s against the dealer’s 7 at the close of another. Watching me from the rail, Danny didn’t blanch when I surrendered a 17 on the last hand of one round. On ensuing rounds, though, only two advanced from each table, and it went that way until there was just one table left with six players, all vying for a share of $150,000. The three players with the most chips at each table advanced to the next level. In typical tournament style, it worked like this: Six players filled the seats on each of a dozen blackjack tables everybody began with $2,500 in tournament chips. The casino was putting up a chunk of the prize money and player entry fees covered the rest. In light of all that, risking a fraction of his recent windfall on a piece of a $150,000 jackpot didn’t seem like a terrible idea. Plus he knew that I understood the rudiments of blackjack tournaments. But my friend Danny had been on a rush with sports and I had already won some money for us via a miraculously good run at card counting. Story from the October 2014 issue of the magazine.Īrguably, there were better ways to invest $1,000. Gambling guru Michael Kaplan discusses this technique in this feature When you’re simply playing against the house. Tournament requires a completely different strategy and mindset than Grand prize in the 2014 World Series of Poker. Nine players will sit down in Las Vegas to compete for the $10 million

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