Last hand of a 2 player playoff. 4 of 5 hand playoff has left each player with 1000. Both bet 50 on last hand. First bettor receives a bj, 2nd has a20 and dealer has a10 up. How does 1st seat play this hand?
Are we to assume that BJ pays 3-2 in this tourney? I would stand on the BJ and force the other play to split his 10's.
I took the liberty of splitting this post out of the other thread, so we can keep the discussions separate. Carry on.
Bj Versus 20 Yesterday I posted a teaser that only received 0ne response. Today I have another similar play that I hope will generate more interest. Last hand of semis. Two players remain, both with equal bankrolls of 1000. both bet 50. 1st player receives A-9 2ND gets BJ. Dealer has 6. No 1 doubles and catches an 8 for 18. What should no 2 do? Double or stand?(double on bj is allowed and bj pays 3-2) At what point does no 2 alter his-her play from stand to double or should he-she double on any hand?
There might have been some confusion regarding terminology: To me, a 'teaser' implies that the author knows (or believes they know) the answer. A teaser is a sort of test for the rest of us, to see if we arrive at the same conclusions. When a few people have had a stab at it, the author comes back to reveal what their thinking was. I suspect you didn't get much response to your first question because, viewing it as a teaser, we were all scratching our heads wondering how the answer could be anything other than stand. I think your second question is quite tricky. Since, barring a swing, a dd will only yield a tie, we need to be able to assign some value to this outcome. That will depend on how the rules say a tie gets resolved. Player 2 will be a 41.14% underdog by standing, when player 2's total is 18. (i.e. Player 1 will win when the dealer gets 17 or busts, which is 16.54 + 42.32 = 58.86%). But would doubling improve on this? If I've done my sums right, then the possible outcomes of a double wil be - Swing in player 1's favour: 12.54% Swing in player 2's favour: 17.53% No Swing (therfore a tie) : 69.93% So it all hinges on how often you will win the tie-breaker. If, for the sake of argument, you assume it is exactly half the time, then you get player 2's chances as - 17.53 + 69.93/2 = 52.50%, and doubling is better than standing. (in fact it makes you a small favourite) If the tie-breaker is a single round then the player who will be acting second must have a slight advantage, probably not enough to stop doubling being the right choice here, but maybe enough in the case of other totals / dealer cards. (And quite possibly enough, in the above example, to mean that you are still an underdog when doubling.)
double that blackjack down Mike, it is a nice teaser, though somewhat involved. It has straightforward answers with one aspect requiring fine-tuning. We need to know what happens when both players end up with the same results. It could be treated as neutral play but more likely it shouldn’t because the betting order will change and on the next hand P1 (Player 1) will have betting position advantage but it may vary depending on Tie play-off rules. If P2 (Player 2) doubles and has 18, P1’s standing on blackjack advances him or her only when the dealer ends up with hand total 18 to 21. Look up dealers final results to know the exact chances for each player chances. Okay, assuming dealer hits soft 17 (as on most Internet sites) the dealer will have eighteen or better 44.66%. That’s the chance of advancing for P2 standing on blackjack. Doubling on blackjack vs. dealer 6 produces 61.49% wins, 6.77% pushes, and 31.74% loses (note that s17 would cause almost 2% less loses). What’s your feeling now? Difficult to say, this is only partially helpful because we don’t know when P1 and P2 have the same outcomes. We need to add all separate chances based on the dealer outcome and P2’s double down card to find results that are better, same, or worse than P1. P2 will best P1 if the dealer has 18 and P2 beats that, and when the dealer has 19 or more and P2 beats or pushes the dealer. It all adds up to 18.13%. It is not as bad as it may seem at first glance because number of the same result that may be resolved as win in subsequent tie-off will be substantial. The same results are when P2 doubles and the dealer busts, and when she has 17 and P2 gets at least 18, the dealer 18 and P2 gets exactly 18, as well when the dealer ends up with 19 or better and P2 loses to that score. This adds up to a considerable 71.25%. When we deduct from 44.66% (chance of winning P2 stands on bj) 18.13% (P2 beats P1 straight up when doubling) --what’s left is 26.53%. This has to be the minimum chance of advancing resulting from the play-off of the Tie to make doubling a better play. Since betting position for equal skill players helps from 5% to up to 20% depending on the rules, P2 would have at least 28.5% additional chances to advance, and most likely about 37% for total chances above 55% -- definitely better play than standing on blackjack. S. Yama PS Colin, sorry for my run-into your post. But I decided to still post mine to show how similar they are (yours have better language command). Also our numbers differ because I used hit s17 rules.
