Tournament Play

[dacium]

Have you guys had any success in tournaments? I just found out my local casino has a small $100 buy in every wednesday or something.

I saw one once and it was filled with people going crazy, like betting 100% of there money on one hand to quickly get a head or busting out etc but I figure if you do it no a good count you have good chance of winning it eventually and should be +EV with the payouts you get.

[RJT]

Alright Dacium,
Playing in tournaments is a completely different animal to playing against the house and counting won't help you much. There are still a lot of opertunities for +ve EV here. Best thing to do is read up on tournments and the 2 books i'd recommend are
Stanford Wong's 'Casino Tournament Strategy'
and
Ken Einiger's 'Play To Win'
I haven't read either of them personally (no tournaments in my area), but they are always the 2 that the people i know who do play tournaments recommend.

RJT.

[Reachy]

You need to get over to the above for more info. Do you know what sort of tourney you were watching? Elimination, accumulation or a hybrid?

Cheers

Reachy

[Cardcounter]

If I'm playing in a winner take all tournament and somebody else has a substansial chip lead on me I will push all my chips in the middle and hope to double up. I know that this will take away my opprtunity to split a pair or two double down. This will most likely make me a slight underdog. But if winning the hand gives me a chance to win the tournament then I will do it and hope to get lucky.
If you are playing in a tournament where you have to win the hand or you will be out push out all your chips or the maximum bet.

[KenSmith]

Yes, a common tournament move of "splitting your bankroll" to retain the ability to split is badly overused. Usually, if you need to win the bet, push the chips in the circle without worrying about splitting. As Reachy mentioned, this sort of stuff is talked about more commonly over at our sister site:
http://www.blackjacktournaments.com/