Question about article on this site

[TheReach]

Hi

I don't know whether this is the best forum for this question but the article is on this site so I'll post here first. Anyway I have been reading the strategy articles on BJ tournaments and am a little confused about something. It's from the bit about getting a free hit and the section in question is below...

Let's say player A has $1300, and player B has $1100. Player A has two good choices for his bet. If he chooses to bet at least $405, he is "taking the high", since no matter what Player B bets he has the bet covered if they both win. Betting $305 actually takes the high as well, but causes problems if Player B has a good double-down hand.

It states that Player A (BR1), who is first to act in this example, should bet $405 since this is taking the high. This is where I start to get lost - if B bets $500 and either gets a BJ or doubles down and wins then he has either $1850 or $2100 and A has only $1705. If B wins a max bet only he will be at $1600 and the $305 mentioned would cover it. So where does the $405 figure come from? IF B bets $300 and doubles down then A would still have the lead. IF B bets $400 and hits a BJ then A would still have the lead.

There is no bet that A can make that will cover all of Bs options. If B does a max bet and doubles and gets $2100 A can't cover that with a single bet, he would need to double himself.

So why $405??

Now I can quite except that I am being completely thick and missing something obvious, so feel free to point it out.

Cheers

 

[KenSmith]

Good question. Here's the scoop...

As you note, Player A can't cover everything with a single bet regardless. If he was allowed to bet $555, that would be a good bet to cover a max-bet blackjack by player B. But, with a max bet of $500, he can't do that.

$305 looks like a pretty good bet here, until you consider the double down situation. Assume Player A bets the $305. Now if Player B bets the max $500, and doubles down, he goes to $2100. Player A can't double to get there now! His winning double of $610 only takes his total to $1910.

That's why $405 is better than $305. A winning double of $810 takes Player A's total to $2110, which just covers the max bet double by Player B.

Here's a great rule to keep you out of trouble when making these kinds of decisions...
When you lead by N, you can take a single-bet high by betting anything over Max-N. (In our example that's $500 - $200, bet more than $305.)
However, to cover the double-down, you must bet at least Max-(N/2). In our example, that's $500 - ($100/2), which means bet more than $400.

Now that formula may sound confusing. Here's an English version of the rule:

When betting ahead of your opponent with a lead, you can underbet the max by almost half your lead, and still cover your opponent's max-bet double down with your own double-down.

Last of all, be sure you check out the tournament mecca, our sister site https://www.blackjacktournaments.com/