World Series of Blackjack on GSN, Episode 1

Any Hints of your play

or do we have to wait until Episode 5? If you can't tell us if you won your round, can you tell us if you made the wildcard?

 

Game 1 analysis

Episode 1 thoughts:

Hand 1: Anthony Curtis and Michael Konik make 500 and 600 bets (100 minimum). A little unusual, as I'd expect Anthony to bet minimum.

Hand 2: Michael makes a big deal about trying to read the dealer's hole card. I don't think he was all that successful. Although he claimed to know that the dealer had a 8 or 9 under her ace after she took a long time to verify (note that all other tables have a peeker, so this dealer is likely not used to peeking manually), but it didn't change his play.

Skip to hand 5: Anthony is now 2900 down, but only bets 700. He didn't have enough to take the lead for a 1/3 bet, so perhaps this is positioning?

Hand 10: Curtis has $9200 and is $3200 out of first and 800 out of second, yet bets 1500. I do not understand. James (a supposed BJ pro) hit 14 vs a 6 out of a shoe. While he may be counting cards, my rudimentary card counting memory tells me that the count must be very low for that move to be right. To his credit, the next 3 cards are a 3, T, and 5, so perhaps he was right.

Hand 11: Curtis is 4400 down, but bets 300? I give up on his brilliance. Michael is equally silly, squandering part of a 2500 lead with a 600 bet.

Hand 12: Curtis and Michael are still making weird bets. Anthony down 3400 betting 300. Michael up 1700 betting 1300. Max rubin is calling his betting brilliant for betting enough to keep a 100 lead. I find it unnecessary. Meanwhile, high roller Connie shows her inexperience by not surrendering 16 vs. T. At least Max knows his basic strategy.

Hand 13: Michael bets huge again and Max calls him brilliant.

Hand 16: Anthony has caught up mostly, but bets 2000, which would put him 150 BEHIND Michael if Michael bets the minimum. Michael matches the 2000 bet, when he could have stayed in 1st with a min bet. Once again, Max thinks he's brilliant. Unfortunately for Michael, he loses a double down hand to cripple him. Blind Regina takes the lead. Connie doubles A4 against a 3. Matt Versagian makes a funny Airplane reference.

Hand 17: Anthony FINALLY makes a good bet trying to take the lead. Michael also makes a good bet going over the top of Anthony. Anthony drops to 4650 after busting and Michael drops to 5600 (leader has 11600).

Hand 18: Everyone is gunshy as noone tries to make a move on Regina, who opens by betting small. Anthony loses YET AGAIN! Bad day for him, but if he would have made a proper progression, perhaps all these losses would have been min bets.

Hand 20: Anthony FINALLY goes all in, but sadly he is so far behind now that a double up won't even put him in second. Predictably he loses another hand. They announce that Anthony went 1-4 on bets of $1000+.

Hand 21: Michael makes another weak 2000 bet when a 5000 bet puts him in the lead. He hits a BJ, but its not enough to put him in the lead.

Hand 26: Unseen to us, Michael is now 100 in the lead over Regina. Connie is 5K out, but bets 500. Michael smartly matches Regina's 500 bet. James is also 5K down, but bets 5K and loses, dropping him to 1400. Michael's double down backfires as is now 400 down.

Hand 27: Regina is 400 up, but bets first, betting 200. Michael bets 700 over the top of her. Suddenly Michael is making proper bets. James makes a huge mistake only betting 700 of his 1400. Connie bets 2000 when she was 5K down, another awful bet. At least Max agrees with me. James wins, but he only has 2100, not 2800.

Hand 28: Regina is now 500 behind Michael, but she finally gets to bet after him. Michael bets 100. IMO, Regina should bet 700, but she bets 600 instead. James goes all-in with 2100, learning from his mistake. Connie makes another awful 500 bet when she's over 1 max bet behind. Connie also surrenders 88 vs. a Q instead of doubling, as Max Rubin rakes her over the coals again. Matt doesn't believe Max. Thanks to Regina's bet, Michael and her are tied.

Hand 29: Regina and Michael both have 11,100. If james would have gone all-in twice, he'd have 5600 and be within a max bet, but instead he has 4200. James and FINALLY Connie (with 5750) both max bet. Regina (who is blind and has her husband announc the bets and cards to her) can stay in front of Connie with a 300 or less bet. Instead she tries to bet 1900 (3x500, 4x100), but grabs all $100 chips which makes her bet $700. The WSOBJ has no exceptions for blind misbets, so the $700 bet stands, possible doing her a favor. Max Rubin announces that Michael should bet 300, but instead he matches Regina's 700 bet. James pulls a 88 vs. 7 which is perfect unless, like James you have no money left to split. Instead he hits, but luck is on his side, as he draws a 3 for 19. Regina busts, then the dealer, putting Michael in the lead.

Hand 30:

*Connie 10,750
Regina 10,400
Michael 11,800
James 8,400

Connie is first to act and properly bets max. Regina also bets 5000. Max says she should have bet 4600 to stay ahead of Regina if all lose, but I think her best bet is 1,900 forcing Michael to choose between the high and low. Michael now bets 4,000. Max Rubin calls this bet brilliant, saying that if everyone wins he wins, and if everyone loses, he wins. WRONG. If everyone loses, James can lock up the low. And if everyone wins, Connie or Regina can lock the win with a double down. I thing his only choices are 3300 locking up the low, and a chance for the high with a double down, or 5000, which gives him the option to win with a double if Connie or Regina doubles. a 4000 bet has no advantage over 5000, yet handcuffs him. James can lock the low with a 500 bet, but max Rubin says he should bet 4200, arguing (again incorrectly) that if everyone wins, he would win, and that he should keep half back to split or double. James listens to none of us, and he throws in 1000. Max Rubin is stunned, but says "Well, he went to Harvard and I went to UNLV, so I'm gonna defer to him." Well, I went to Michigan, so have no problem telling James that he is an idiot.

The stacks are:

*Connie 5,750 5,000 16 Dealer: 7
Regina 5,400 5,000 17
Michael 7,800 4,000 15
James 7,400 1,000 19

Connie can double down for the win here, but instead she makes her third surrender error of the night. Regina stays on 17. If Michael surrenders, he is almost guaranteed 2nd place and a wild card seat, and can win if the dealer gets to 18-21 (unlikely with a 7 up). If he hits and wins, he wins the table, but if he busts, he finishes in second or worse. He chooses to surrender (In retrospect, I think it's the right choice). Finally, James has 19. He has a longshot of winning if he doubles-down and wins while Regina loses. If he stays, he can limp into 2nd if the dealer hits to 18 or 19. I think I would have gone for the glory and doubled down, but he stays on 19.

The dealer turns up the Queen of Spades for 17, giving Regina the win and Michael Konik 2nd place.

I'm curious what other people think of my analysis. I was pretty shocked at the amount of weak play I saw, and I'm wondering if things have changed that much since Wong's book.

 

Excellent analysis toonces.

I too was stunned by James' play on several hands.

I figured his hitting the 16 with dealer 4 up wasn't really a big deal as I believe he only had a $100 bet. On the last hand however, his bet did nothing except basically almost assure him of being locked out. I thought the right move would have been for him to put out a small bet and hope for a dealer natural so that he could win the table or bet the max and plan to double on almost anything.

As play unfolded, he would have won the table with a max bet (of course, Michael would have probably hit if James had max bet).

I also didn't understand some of Anthony Curtis' plays, but, overall he seemed to be doomed by bad cards.

Overall, it was a good start. For me the best part was that my wife who had previously been afraid to try a tournament for fear of making a dumb move now wants to try some tournaments as "Mr. Harvard" made some bad plays and her strong feeling that luck (good or bad) plays a big role in the game.

 

Stupid Question/Observation

Admittedly, I am a novice to blackjack tournaments. However, when I was watching the show last night, I kept wondering why some of the players (particularly Anthony Curtis and the "mind-reader") kept making such dramatically large bets so early in the match.

If you look at the results, all players started with $10,000 and the winners ended up not much higher than that total.

Seems to me that the better strategy is to play conservatively unless and until one player gets so far ahead that conservative play won't allow you to catch up.

Any comments?

 

I know it doesn't make much difference, but by making medium bets that don't take the lead, you risk dropping further behind or dropping out without a high likelihood of jumping into the lead. My thought about his play was that
1) By betting medium, he encouraged Michael to bet wildly, whereas if he went to min bets, Mike wouldn't give him a chance in
2) Being that he was on the national stage, he wanted to look dynamic and stay in the game rather than make 7 min bets followed by losing in a progression.
3) My girlfriend's thought is that he may have purposely played unusually, so that people would not learn anything (or learn the wrong things) from watching him.

Good point.

Good point. I was not considering the effect of the surrender rule, as Wong's book does not cover that contingency. Given that the MDBJ and this tournament use late surrender, I would be interested on reading a strategy article on how surrender should affect the betting on the last hand.

That brings up a question. If the Million Dollar BJ tournament is played as poorly as this event was, IMO, I think I have been underestimating my chances. I did not try for the MDBJ tournament yet. How do y'all think the quality of that event compared to the play we saw here?

 

Tuna, in my opinion, once you develop an early lead or are bunched up for the lead, you should not make large bets. That being said, if someone develops a lead, but then starts betting the minimum, someone in Anthony's place needs to make big bets to catch up, but ONLY if it is enough to take the lead. The reason is that as the final hands come around, there is a big advantage to being in the lead a that time.

 

Well, anyway...

Since I didn't know you would be a part of it earlier, I wish you well

We'll see how it goes on 4/12th

 

What a flurry of nice posts. I think we should blame toonces for it, he did a massive (mostly very good) analysis of GSN’s first installment of their blackjack tournament.

To add to Ken’s near perfect commentary – there is no perfect advice.
We can theorize and assume that everybody plays perfect but it is never, ever a case. Perfect play is a good starting point and is great for conversations but it is rarely the best way of play.
Perfect plan requires perfect execution. One hundred percent guaranteed success played correctly only 50% of times is worth less than a plan that succeeds 80% of times and is played 8 out of 10 times correctly. Many players are better off with somewhat simpler plan but the one that they can carry through.
Blackjack tournament is a game of mistakes with usually smaller but cumulative consequences where last hands weighs in heavily.
There is nothing wrong with mid range bets (or small ones) when trailing if there is enough time to make catch-up bets. Overbeting is a no-no for a good player but it is a wonderful equalizer for a less than average player.

And now, some specifics.
The easiest play to analyze is James’s, as all is done and said when he has to acts on his rather unfortunate bet (however, I would not call him names, not only cuz’ I am only a high school dropout, but out of a huge respect for his other, incredible, gaming ralated work).
James has bet 1,000 and has kept 7,400, his hand: hard 19, dealer showing 7
Mike as result of surrender has 9,800.
Connie as result of surrender has 8,250.
Regina stands on 17, bet 5,000, kept 5,400.
Assuming all players are equal in skill level, advancing to the final is worth about $42K and placing second in the round qualifies for “repechage” round which is worth roughly 20% of being in the final. Tieing for first and second, since I don’t know the betting order in the tie-off play-offs, should be worth about 60% of being in the final.
There are four possible actions: surrender, stand, hit, and double down. There are six possible outcomes: doubled bet loss, single bet loss, half bet loss (surrender), push, single bet win, and doubled win.
Surrender gets third or fourth place – EV (expected value) $0
Stand gets first place 0%, second place 22% - EV $1,850
Hit is definitely worse than dd – EV $410
Double down gets first place 3.3%, play-off for first place 5.7% and second place 5.2% - total EV $12,220

More later,
S. Yama

 

Thanks for the mostly very nice words.

Thanks, Yama. You're right that I shouldn't have made an ad hominem comment about James. I was not aware of his work (though I was aware of Anthony Curtis and Michael Konik). What I meant to say is that I was not afraid to critique James final bet like Max claimed to be.

As for the Double down, thanks for verifing today that the double down was correct. I was surprised Max didn't mention the possibility.

 

Million Dollar Tournament

Toonces, some of what I saw on TV is still better then the play at the Hilton. It is anybodys shot at the Hilton, did you see last years finals?
They played better then most of the players in the monthly qualifiying tournaments.

Don't get me wrong, they're are a lot of VERY GOOD players there, but more of the average table player taking a shot for the million. It comes down to luck, right or wrong as long as the timing is right.

It is worth the chance, but you better hurry this weekend and then in April 8 - 10 will be the last two monthly qualifying rounds.

As of now no one knows if they're will be a Million Dollar III tournament for next year.

 

Unclear

Are you sure that the expectation from doubling is over 12,000. That seems high to me. I think it was probably a much closer play.

The other issue with this hand is whether he should have taken the low or bet half his bankroll. The correct move is not obvious to me. Remember that the other 3 players also have a chance to double or split. If just one of the others successfully doubles to a winning hand, it takes first away from Grosjean. If Grosjean takes low, he has a 22% chance of finishing first (maybe higher than 22% if the others are doubling to catch Konik).

His bet of 1,000 is the maximum he could bet while still covering the low if he surrendered and assuming no other player surrenders (which probably wasn't a bad assumption). The benefit of betting 1,000 is that he can catch Konik with a double down if the other two players bust and Konik chooses to surrender. Of course, he doesn't win if the dealer gets a 10 up blackjack, which happens about 2.5% of the time. In summary, it still isn't clear to me what the correct move was. Maybe one of the experts will chime in to clear up some of the uncertainty I have.


Lamar

 

Right. Good eye. My bad.

I'd hit wrong cell on the spreadsheet (41.2% instead of 5.7%- the correct chance for play-offs)
Still, the EV is $3,267

S. Yama

 

EV for double

Dear S.Yama:

You're absolutely right, DD was the best decision. No doubt about it.

However, the EV is much less. Let's follow your probabilities, we have in thousands:

3.3% x 42 + 5.7% x (42 x .6) + 5.2% x (42 x 1/5) = 3.25 (3,250)

About 9K difference in EV.

Besides, about 3.3% (the probability for taking first place), I've got 3.9%
Here's the proof:
He has to win and Regina has to lose (first place without playoff)
D18 x 2/13 + D19 x 2/13 + D20 x 1/13 = .138 x 2/13 + .079 x 2/13 + + .079 x 1/13 = 3.95%

Finally we have EV = 3.9% x 42 + 5.7 x (42 x .6) + 5.2% x (42 x 1/5) =
= 3.5 (3,500)

I'll post some more analysis (about last hand decisions) later.

Best regards.

 

Ken,
I finally caught the replay last night. How did Connie get selected to play in this tournament?
We missed seeing you in Biloxi last weekend. It sure helps being a "good ole boy" when playing at the Grand.