...one of them alone against the dealer...accumulation : 21 of 105 entries will make the semis where 2 per table advance to the final (first prize 150k) : You get 5000 chips every round; 25 min. 2000 max. bets. Would anybody having played this kind of format before help me answering these three questions : 1 - What should my target be for the three accumulations rounds? 2 - Should I play differently in the second round, the one alone against the dealer (you can bet as many spots as you want; different amounts per spots are allowed)? 3 - How would I redo my calculations after two rounds and, if need be, set a new target for the final round after seing my position and the results of the first two? Any help on this one would be appreciated. I never played alone against the dealer before in these types of tournaments. It's being played March 9th in Charlevoix, Quebec (Canada). I know a few members of this site who will attend and would benefit from this info.
accumulation tourney Archie, square root formula should be your starting point. So sq rt (105/21) = 2.24 That tells us that to be in top five scores out of 105 players, when starting with 5,000 bankroll, you should finish with at least 11,180. Usually it takes 10% to 30% less than that score depending on rules and more importantly on consensus of what the participants think is the right number. Now you need to deal with three helpful data, and look for more once you are there (talk to people, watch scores on other tables as the semifinal unfolds, etc.). It is advisable to slightly overshoot expected number. The fact that players are allowed to play more than one spot will cause bigger polarization as some players will get multisplits and doubles on more than one hand – this generally would lower the goal score. Also because 10,000 is such a nice round number many people will (sometimes even subconsciously) set their goal on anything over 10K. This has a stabilizing effect. Personally, I would set it at mid ten thousand something like 10,550. You will have some time (to gather some useful information if you can increase your chances of winning your bets) before you need to push max bets out. But give yourself at least fifteen rounds to get to the goal score. At one point I would try to win about 1,000 in one hand to have bankroll of 6,000 and then bet one third and one third on two spots and keep one third for eventual split or double. Good luck, S. Yama
So ... I would need around 33000 to 34000 total for the three qualification rounds to qualify for the semis and should be more conservative in the round alone against the dealer because that would be the round where the scores should be lower or wait at least untill the fifteenth hand (there are 21 hands total every round) before moving. Would you play one spot or multiple spots in the round alone against the dealer (what about them allowing different amounts on multiple spots). Thank you for your insight and your experienced knowledge.
more rounds? Seems like misinterpreted your post. What I wrote applies to one quarterfinal round where 21 out of 105 advance to semifinal. If there are more rounds I don’t know any details. S. Y.
To qualify for the semi-finals.. 105 participants play three rounds (accumulation) over two days : 21 players will advance First round : everybody gets 5000 chips: regular tables of seven people against a dealer (one spot only) Second round : everybody starts again with 5000 chips, but this time each player is alone against a dealer (multiple spots and different amounts allowed) Third round : 5000 chips again: back to regular tables facing a dealer (one spot only) After every round, the amount you finish with is final and closed, not carried over to the next round. Your informed or your position between each round. In total, over two days and three rounds, you get 15000 chips to play with in 5000 chips installments. Your final result is the accumulation of the totals over three rounds.
goal I'm confused. Should not the number of hands have something to do with the goal? Also, since blackjack has a negative expectation, how in the world can a reasonable goal be over twice the starting bankroll?
lynx You should play a TEC game at playubt.com or any other freeroll - the BRs are often 4-8X starting BR!!!! It's scary Cheers Reachy
twice the starting bankroll In the long run blackjack is negative expectation. However you are only playing 21 hands at a time which is a long way from the long run. In an accumulation format a lot of people will be "putting it out". Most will not succeed, but enough will that you had better be one of them.
fine-tunning Okay, What I am trying to do is to point out some element that can help fine-tune estimating the goal score that should guarantee the advancement. Some of them tell us that the score should go up, some indicate that it could go down. Only being where the tournament is played and assessing how other players will play can shape the goal score. Most of those point have rather small effect, so you would not be making any real mistakes if you go max bets from the very beginning and shoot straight of the square root formula goal less about ten – fifteen percent. The less rounds (hands) played in each session the better chance that players will not get very high scores but it crowds above averege results. Twenty five rounds is not very much, especially that max bet is only 40% of the starting bankroll. With more rounds played polarization is higher so a top few scores will be very high but also more people will bust out because some who at one point have even significant gains then run into series of losses and bust out. The fact that other players will see their scores after the fist session and then the second session will bring up total scores, as top posted scores set the goal for all players. Even players that misplayed will get a chance to learn and catch up. The final scores will depend a lot on how “lucky” the group was in the first session. If it is higher, people set (or adjust) their score higher. Since for one hundred people and playing tweny five hands top twentieth result can easily fluctuate tweny percent. It should be considered normal that total score (after three sessions) would vary by more than 30% around the expected. Having square root formula in mind I would go max from the very first hand I would keep betting maximum using basic strategy on aggressive side until I would reach twenty thousand in the first round, and then switch to betting minimum for the rest of the tournament. Analyze results of the first round and make adjustment. Since it is very unlikely that you will reach the goal in the first round keep betting maximum until you either get it or bust out. Look at posted results, the twentieth result should be representative but watch out for distribution of other numbers it should be gradually distributed. There are “bulges” and “valleys”, meaning that if there is a bigger group of players hanging just under or over the looked up score in the next session some of them may “spill over” into the target score. Results of the second round will be more polarized due to chance of playing more spots and playing more than twenty one hands, so will be the third round as generally players bet much more aggressively in the last round and they know pretty close what to shoot for. It will be interesting to know spots ten, twenty-one and let’s say thitry-five after first, second, and the final round. S. Yama
I am still struggling with how to set a goal when two or more rounds are played and the total of those rounds determine your final score. Wong's formula does not really cover this as he was talking about a single round in his book when he discussed the square root formula. In the case of the tournament being discussed, it seems to me that applying Wong's formula to the TOTAL starting bankrolls gives a goal that is much higher than needed i.e. $33,600 ($15,000 x 2.24). In actual play, most players will not be fortunate enough to multiply each $5,000 starting bankroll into $11,200. And those that do go above the $11,200 in a round will probably do worse or even bust out in another round. I have come up with a set of calculations that I would like to have some feedback from the forum. My suggestion is as follows: 1) Using Wong's square root formula, calculate the bankroll needed as if only 1 round was played. $5,000 x 2.24 = $11,200 2) Add the starting bankrolls of the other rounds to be played. $11,200 + $5,000 + $5,000 = $21,200 3) Now we need to make an additional adjust for how many advance. The lower the percentage of advancing players, the higher the goal must be. This is already accounted for in Wong's formula to a degree but I feel an additional adjustment must be made when 2 or more rounds are added together. So I've come up with this formula. For every 1 out of X that advance, multiply the "X" by .05 then add the result to 1.00 to get "Y" OR Y = 1 + (X * .05). Then multiply Y by the result from "STEP 2". In the example we are talking about, 1 in 5 advance. So the formula is: $21,200 * (1 + (5 * .05)). This works out to a final goal of $26,500. 4) Make further refinements based on unusual rules, quality of the competition, etc. This is a tough one, good luck. 5) Then adjust the final calculated goal based on how the play is going. Watch the competition scores and adjust as needed. Sometime a substantial adjustment down may be needed but from my observations, seldom is a upward adjustment needed.I think it's important to keep in mind when setting a goal that the goal should be enough to be reasonably sure of advancing and not an estimate of the cut-off point. Archie: After the tournament is played, it would be interesting if you could report what the cut off point was for advancing.
I will do... just that Toolman. What's your opinion of that one round against the dealer (many spots and different amounts allowed? Would it be better to stick to one spot? S. Yama suggest that in this type of round scores might be lower?
First I just want to say that, as usual, S. Yama's advice and comments on how to achieve your goal is rock solid. I was only commenting on an alternative way to calculate the goal. Now for your question. I have never played in a tournament where I played one on one against the dealer. I think that how I play would depend on how I did in the 1st round: If my 1st round score was low: I would start by playing 3 or 4 spots with a bet of $400 per per spot. If I do well on the first few hands I would up the bet per spot to $500 or $600. Whatever my bet becomes, I would not lower it. As Wong says, reach your goal or bust out trying. If I achieved my goal, I would switch to minimum bets on just one spot. If my 1st round score was good but did not achieve my goal: I would start by playing 2 spots with a bet of $400 per spot. I would not increase the bet or the number of spots. The reason is that if I'm well on my way to achieving my goal, I don't want to take a large risk of losing what I gained on the first round. Again, if I achieved my goal, I would switch to minimum bets on just one spot. If my 1st round score was enough to achieve my goal: I would minimum bet 1 spot the whole round. I based these opinions on the fact that you have one more round to play and you have the opportunity to see how you stand after this 2nd round is completed which means you have the opportunity to adjust your goal for the 3rd round accordingly.
Lot's of cancellations at the last minute made it a 63 players tournament (instead of 105) in Charlevoix, Quebec (Canada). Too bad because the organizers kept it a first class affair offering 100k for first place. Four members of this forum where there and BJFAN4 came the closest to the final table having to hit a hard 17 on the last hand to make it (he busted). Still, congratulations. Cut off point : 20,400 The cut off point after three rounds was 20% lower than Wong's formula : square root (63/21) =1.17. I personally set my target at the higher level (25,000) and dropped it to 22,000 after the second round (the one alone against the dealer) where, as S. Yama predicted, the scores were lower and more polarized (50% busted out in that round alone). Here are the numbers that S. Yama was interested in (positions 10, 21 and 35 after every round) : After the first round: 10 - 10,250 21 - 8,050 35 - 5,275 After the second round: 10 - 16,025 21 - 12,125 35 - 8,937 After the third round: 10 - 22,000 21 - 20,400 (cut-off) 35 - 12,000 I did not qualify, but the good news for me is that their dropping the hybrid formula for the 2007 series of six tournaments (50k first prize) and a Grand Finale (200,000k first prize) in March 2008, which will be held much closer (Casino du Lac Leamy, Ottawa area). Starting with the first tournament of the series of six tournaments next month (April 18), table winners will directly advance to the semi-finals and, if you fail, everybody get's a second chance (no rebuys, entries limited to 126 in Lac Leamy and Montreal, and 84 in Charlevoix, the three casinos that will each hold a tournament twice in 2007)
Archie, Thanks for the update on this tournament. Sorry you didn't make the cut but it looks like better tournaments are on the horizon. There is one thing I don't understand about your calculation: Did you mean 1.73 instead of 1.17? I am continually working on improving my goal calculations and this tournament helped a lot. My calculations came out very good on this one. I will restate what I said in my post #10 with the revised calculations (due to only 63 players) in red: 1) Using Wong's square root formula, calculate the bankroll needed as if only 1 round was played. $5,000 x 1.73 (square root of 63/21) = $8,650 2) Add the starting bankrolls of the other rounds to be played. $8,650 + $5,000 + $5,000 = $18,650 3) Now we need to make an additional adjust for how many advance. The lower the percentage of advancing players, the higher the goal must be. This is already accounted for in Wong's formula to a degree but I feel an additional adjustment must be made when 2 or more rounds are added together. So I've come up with this formula. For every 1 out of X that advance, multiply the "X" by .05 then add the result to 1.00 to get "Y" OR Y = 1 + (X * .05). Then multiply Y by the result from "STEP 2". In the example we are talking about 1 in 3 advance. So the formula is: $18,650 * (1 + (3 * .05)). This works out to a final goal of $21,448. We'll round that to $21,500. You said the final cut off point for the top 21 was $20,400 and the cut off point point for the top 10 was $22,000, so a goal of $21,500 would have done the trick nicely.
1.73 is the right number. You may find some trivia interesting : the cutoff point for this tournament (24,400) was exactly the same as in their December 2006 tournament (105/21) where only two qualification rounds were played (everything else remaining the same). At that time, I reached my target of 20,000 (20,150) only to miss by 350. Was that ever frustrating.
Thanks for that bit of information Archie. As I said, my formula is undergoing constant refinement. In step 3 of my calculations, I thought using a multiple of .05 might be a little low and the results you posted of the previous event proved that. Back to the drawing board!
Kudos to Casino Charlesvoix/Casinos of Quebec Very happy to beat the "well-done drum" for these BJT events. Free food and drinks were in abundance during this 2 day event. The event staff were omni-present and the BJT itself was well run and a real exciting tournament. Just to spice things up on the day of the tournament, all guests of the Hotel complex had to be evacuated at 5 am due to a small fire. To compensate for the inconvenience, the Hotel Resort gave every guest a free room nite to be used at a future date and free golf for a foursome (carts included) to each guest, also to be used at a future date. Nice touch. As Archie indicated, the rules are changing for the 2007/2008 season as the tournaments will now be table elimination for all rounds, which is a good thing. So, a good time was had by all participants.
