My First Live Tourney

I finally discovered a monthly event here in London. I just got back from playing. Alas, I didn't do very well, but I had fun.

I found out about it here - http://casinovision.blogspot.com/

The rules were not ideal -

• The standard house rules for regular blackjack: ENHC, No Surrender, No DD for Less (not even to go all-in), Split any pair, DD on any first two cards, No insurance except for even money, No DD allowed on a BJ.
• Seven per table, with only the table winner advancing.
• Only seven rounds (i.e. everybody gets dealer button just once!)
• Starting BR: 1000
• Min bet: 25, Max bet 1000
• A countdown of all the BRs prior to the final hand
• A secret bet available

It was £10 to enter, and £10 to rebuy, with a £500 winner-takes-all prize (plus a meal for two for 2nd place, and comp points for all the finalists).

As anticpated, I found it excruciatingly difficult to try and keep track of the BRs. At my first table I locked myself out of contention by betting small on the penultimate hand (as it happens, I lost the hand anyway, or I would have really felt sick).

I did a little better with my rebuy - in seat 5, I was BR2 for the final round, unfortunately with BR1 last to act, in seat 6. I think he had 1575 to my 1500. I bet 750 in order to be able to DD, and also hoping BR1 might bet 1000. (I think my 750 also had all the other single-bet wins covered, but I could easily have made a mistake. It was very frustrating not to have all the numbers on a screen in front of me! )

Alas, BR1 correlated my bet. I'm not 100% certain, but I think he may have bet 800, rather than match me, which would have meant he couldn't DD. I had 16 and had to DD against a dealer 2. Naturally I caught a 6.


I chatted with Paul, the tournament organiser and author of the above blog, both before and after the tournament. I think this was the fifth they have run and the rules and structure are still very much a work in progress. He was very keen to listen to ideas for how things could be improved. I made as many of the obvious suggestions as I could think of, and also pointed him at this site to take a look at Rick's TBJPA rules.

One suggestion I made was implemented on the day - draw lots for seat allocations. Annoying really. I should have kept my mouth shut and attempted to muscle my way into seat 6 every time!

Off the top of my head, I suggested that the biggest change I would like to see would be a switch to something like -
15 hands, 2 advance from a table of 5
- instead of 7 hands, 1 advances from 7 (which seems too much of a lottery). The idea went down well, so I'm hopeful it might be implemented.

I've got a month to try and learn how to count chips properly!

 

Congratulations on your first live BJT, Colin. Sure is a different animal than it is online, isn't it? Having to count and remember those chip stacks and not having it on the screen right in front of you, like in online play or the teasers here. Hang in there, you're an excellent BJT strategist, you've just got to get used to the live environment.
At least your first time wasn't on a major network's TV show......

Go get 'em! :gun:

 

Thanks guys

The transition to live play will certainly take some effort. I'm glad I have the chance to get some experience, without it costing very much. It's a shame it's only once a month, but maybe more opportunities will follow.

The shrewdest thing I did was enquire about the details of the rules in advance, advice gleaned from Ken's writings as I recall. There wasn't much available in printed form, so it was a case of asking lots of questions. During the game, I saw two or three occasions when someone wanted to double but was told they couldn't because they hadn't kept enough chips back. I almost managed a coup on my final hand, thanks to betting half my stack, but it was not to be.

Other than that, I mostly just went through the motions, feeling a little lost and out of my depth. And, with just seven rounds, it was all over before I knew what was happening. Of course, everybody else must have been even further out of their depth, but that still means we were all drowning!

 

Live BJ Tournament Jinx

Hey Colin,

It is great news that you played in a live BJ Tournament but what is even better is that you found a game being held in the UK (this is the first BJ Tournament in England that I have seen officially promoted since I have been on this site).

But beware of the curse of live Blackjack Tournaments Colin.

Reachy has all but disappeared from here after his foray in Las Vegas. I never played the game again after returning from the TBJPA in Seattle and did not go back to the net games (even though I finally sorted out my ISP). BJMace was giving it all out loud after his UBT success and has now gone very quiet also.

I am not sure what happened to the other Brits above but I found it difficult to motivate myself by just playing on the net, and looking at the American players posts about all the tournaments in the USA, well it just became torture for me.

Now that there is a regular tournament in the UK I may just get my books out again and start back on the dollar sit and goes for some practice.

Hope to see you soon in London, London…lol.

Andy

 

Andy,

I'll try not to succumb to the jinx!

When I first found the casinovision blog, it was to discover that I had just missed three days of tournaments over the May Bank Holiday weekend. I got the impression that this had been a one-off event, but started checking the site for updates and eventually saw that they hold roulette and BJ events on the first weekend of every month.

I think you'd be a little underwhelmed if you made a special trip to take part in a monthly tournament in its current form, but it may become more attractive as it develops, and maybe there will be another such three-day 'festival' to tempt you.

I've also been checking the Grosvenor Victoria website in case there's any mention of a repeat of the event that Ken found (the poker blogger post). Nothing so far, but perhaps I should phone up and ask. Maybe there are BJTs happening all over the place, unpromoted, and part of the challenge is to sniff them out!

 

Good that you got your feet wet. It does take a few live tournaments before you feel at ease at the table - but it will happen.

Unless you have a mind like only one person I know, it's not possible to keep track of the chip counts of all players at the table. Instead, concentrate on the higher counts and, depending on circumstances, only the highest count may matter. GOOD LUCK.

 

Thanks Toolman

Good advice. I think the difficulty is perhaps compounded in this tournament because you have six novice opponents, all making quite large bets from the very start, meaning the situation changes more rapidly than my poor brain can cope with!

A question has since occurred to me. Ought there to be a requirement that people announce the amount of their bets, rather than just push a stack of chips forward? Even on the final round, for which there had been a countdown of the BRs, I found myself having to peer at stacks of chips, not to see what people had left, but to see how much they had bet.

 

You'll do just fine, Colin, you've got a great handle on strategies. Once you get used to the live game, you'll be murderously tough.

Unfortunately, that opens up a whole realm of possibilities for chicanery. Players with underhanded motives could intentionally announce one amount and push out a different amount in chips. While rules can be put in place to handle such a situation, it still makes things difficult for the players and the tournament staff.

I don't like it, either, but counting the chip stacks is currently part of the game. It has been my oft-mentioned contention that taking stack counting out of the live game would help with the appeal to newbies who are accustomed to Internet play. Doesn't look like that will happen anytime in the near future.

Hang in there. You'll get used to counting the stacks before long.

 

Do remember that the brain acts as a muscle of sorts. The more you work it, the better and more efficient it becomes.

 

UK Tournaments

Colin.

You could be the first Brit to make an entry in the Blackjack Tournaments.com Event Calendar for a tournament held over here in London. I am not sure how you do this as it never came up before but I am sure that you will work it out.

Andy

 

I was actually enquiring about what the normal procedure is, rather than just saying what I'd like to see. For some reason, it had never occurred to me that chip-counting skills would be needed just as much for players' bet sizes as for their remaining, unbet chips. I was just wondering if the way they have elected to do things here matches the usual practice.

I think mine has become flabby from too much sitting in front of the TV.

 

Not possible

The calendar doesn't include Europe or the UK among the regions, so it's not possible at the moment.

I always post any information I discover regarding European tournaments in this forum. (Not that there has been a great deal of it.)

 

Would that include a new region (e.g., 'rest of the world')? I've not been a user of the calendar, but it looks like that would be necessary in order to search only for those events.

I don't really know. Perhaps not. The European forum probably serves the purpose just as well.

 

Let's hope it doesn't need brain lipo! O_O

 

Episode II

I attended both the roulette and the blackjack tournaments this time. The roulette was a hoot; I may start a separate thread about the particular format involved and seek some strategy advice. But I have to mention here that I won my heat, and thus made a £10 profit, winning £20 in 'fortune points' for a £10 entry. I also had been sent a £10 coupon to spend on an even-money roulette bet, which went my way too.

The fortune points are usable for gaming, as well as buying food and drink at the casino, so I used my roulette tournament winnings to buy into the blackjack, the next day.

Richard (aka bjmace) had said he might show up, and he duly did. I didn't recognise him at first, and it was only after someone pointed out that he had a blackjack baseball cap, that I guessed his identity!

The heats were still only seven rounds, like last time, but this time with two advancing. Inevitably, therefore, since we didn't need to come first, we both won our tables! That seems to be a law - you only win when it doesn't matter.

A quirk of the rules came up, which I hadn't known about. If someone was knocked out early, the number of rounds was reduced. So it was not actually seven rounds, but one orbit of the table, which seems like an odd rule.

The final was fourteen rounds (or two orbits), and 2000 chips instead of 1000. There was also a last-minute decision to award second place £100 in fortune points, rather than just the £20 that the other finalists (excluding the £500 winner) get. At one stage it was looking very good for me, after I won a big catchup bet. But then the former leader made a large bet which he then split and doubled down on, winning all three bets, and taking a very big lead.

Mace went out a couple of rounds later, having had no option but to go all-in. In the last round, I was BR2 and made a rash attempt to get a near-impossible swing, when I probably ought to have settled for a likely second-place finish. I'm still finding it difficult to be quite as coolly analytical in the real world as in the virtual world (not that I don't make rash decisions online too).

Anyway it was all good fun, and good to meet a fellow BJT'er.

Maybe it will be third time lucky.

 

Episode III

Still no cigar.

Again, I attended both the roulette and the BJ and had a fun time at both. And again, I made both final tables but the big prize eluded me.

I'm still not wholly comfortable at the live tables, making mistakes that I probably wouldn't online, but things can only get better. I had a great stroke of luck, pushing all-in on the last hand because I couldn't think of the right bet, and getting a BJ to guarantee my advance to the final.

Mace made the journey once again, but the cards were against him and he didn't advance.

Andy has said he might come down for a future tournament. If we pack the field with enough BJT members, then surely one of us can win this thing!

 

London Calling

I am looking at coming down to the smoke for the November BJ tournament.

My wife wants to visit London again for a long weekend and take in a show so we have agreed on seeing the play Blood Brothers. She has no interest in going to the tournament so I will be attending the casino on my own.

Looking forward to seeing our members London Colin and bjmace at the casino.

I have started to practice the game again and will be pumping myself up to the song below…lol

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=MqO1b-5RsAs

“London calling to the far away towns. Now war is declared and battle come down”.

Joe Strummer R.I.P.

Ps Colin, I will pm you to check date, location etc.

Andy

 

Excellent

See you there, Andy.

P.S. There's a map, and contact details for the casino on the website -
http://www.galacasino.co.uk/gc2/local-casinos/casino-finder/london/queensway.html