Hi all,
I got another offer for a freeroll BJ tournament at my main shop in AC, and since I had no clue how to approach it last time, figure I might run it past the folks here:
I've generally understood most blackjack tournaments to be in a shootout format -- essentially, that 1-2 players moves on from each table, until it eventually plays down to a final table, which has prizes. Some formats I've seen advertised have allowed for entries/reentries into round two, but this rough concept that you're playing against your tablemates directly means you just eyeball other stacks and bet small until towards the end of the hands allotted, and then embrace the variance/ensure you have a shot to play for whatever place is needed.
The freeroll at this shop has two main differences as far as I can tell:
1. Every entrant plays their first table for a raw score, and then the top 15 totals advance. There is no posting of totals until everyone has played, so there was no way to know what the needed score is, and nobody offered me any concept of what sort of scores previously made day 2.
2. The tournament is winner-take-all, the house will not be party to any sort of chop at the final table.
Everybody starts with 20K, you can only wager in increments of 1K, wagers are 1-10K for 14 hands and then unlimited on the final hand 15. I believe entrants are capped at 300, although my guess is they only got around 150-200 runners. For what it's worth, one of the players at my table had literally never played blackjack before, so I'm sure I'm happy to take some free EV (1st is $100K, and everyone making day 2 gets $500 in funny money).
Does anybody have any ideas of what a "decent" total to shoot for would be? I'm not really even sure how to approach this problem, so if someone wanted to describe an approach to me I'd be happy to do some of the math myself, I just don't know where to start.
Working backwards from whatever that number is (I figured 50-60K is probably the number), I figured the best strategy is probably to wager around 3-5K per hand and just hope to get lucky more or less. Maybe that's not embracing variance enough? Should I bet the max until I get to a number I'm happy with, and then go 1K a hand?
Any thoughts on whether to trust random AC denizens with a chop at a FT at something like this? My reflex is no and embrace even more variance, but I mean, $20K would probably move me to a $25 base unit from $10, whereas the full $100K probably just provides additional ROR insurance, since I doubt the shops in AC are going to be comfortable with me spreading black to purple.
Thanks.
TL;DR: What number should I shoot for given a non-shootout blackjack tournament? 2.5-3x starting stack sound about right?
I got another offer for a freeroll BJ tournament at my main shop in AC, and since I had no clue how to approach it last time, figure I might run it past the folks here:
I've generally understood most blackjack tournaments to be in a shootout format -- essentially, that 1-2 players moves on from each table, until it eventually plays down to a final table, which has prizes. Some formats I've seen advertised have allowed for entries/reentries into round two, but this rough concept that you're playing against your tablemates directly means you just eyeball other stacks and bet small until towards the end of the hands allotted, and then embrace the variance/ensure you have a shot to play for whatever place is needed.
The freeroll at this shop has two main differences as far as I can tell:
1. Every entrant plays their first table for a raw score, and then the top 15 totals advance. There is no posting of totals until everyone has played, so there was no way to know what the needed score is, and nobody offered me any concept of what sort of scores previously made day 2.
2. The tournament is winner-take-all, the house will not be party to any sort of chop at the final table.
Everybody starts with 20K, you can only wager in increments of 1K, wagers are 1-10K for 14 hands and then unlimited on the final hand 15. I believe entrants are capped at 300, although my guess is they only got around 150-200 runners. For what it's worth, one of the players at my table had literally never played blackjack before, so I'm sure I'm happy to take some free EV (1st is $100K, and everyone making day 2 gets $500 in funny money).
Does anybody have any ideas of what a "decent" total to shoot for would be? I'm not really even sure how to approach this problem, so if someone wanted to describe an approach to me I'd be happy to do some of the math myself, I just don't know where to start.
Working backwards from whatever that number is (I figured 50-60K is probably the number), I figured the best strategy is probably to wager around 3-5K per hand and just hope to get lucky more or less. Maybe that's not embracing variance enough? Should I bet the max until I get to a number I'm happy with, and then go 1K a hand?
Any thoughts on whether to trust random AC denizens with a chop at a FT at something like this? My reflex is no and embrace even more variance, but I mean, $20K would probably move me to a $25 base unit from $10, whereas the full $100K probably just provides additional ROR insurance, since I doubt the shops in AC are going to be comfortable with me spreading black to purple.
Thanks.
TL;DR: What number should I shoot for given a non-shootout blackjack tournament? 2.5-3x starting stack sound about right?