Ok, someone asked for war stories from Tunica, so I thought I would post this since I have been thinking about it all weekend. I am sure a lot of others from BJT who were in the same boat might want to share their thoughts too. There was a lot of speculation as to what the cutoff point would be to advance to round two (semi finals) at Goldstrike. General consensus seemed to be that $30,000 was a target to make. First round scores, high was about $30,000, cutoff (35th) was $10,000. Turned out that the estimate was just a bit short, due to lots of high scores in round 2. One whole table in second round made the cut because everyone pressed max $5K bets and dealer dumped. Scores at that table were $40 - $60K range. Final cutoff was $31,000. Strategy for accumulation is to bet big from beginning and when you hit the target switch gears and just protect your bankroll. A lot of BJT players did this and wound up on the bubble...$27K to $30K. Several players made their target early in the round and could have probably added another $3-5K without to much risk, but didn't and wound up not making the cut as a result. My question is should you add some margin to your target just in case you are low? If so, how much is reasonable? Seems like 10% might have been about right ($33K), but if everyone had raised their target as a group, then the cutoff might have increased to $32-33K too. Naturally you have to balance risk and reward with number of hands to go, but it seems like if the risk is acceptable you should shoot for it instead of sitting on the bubble and being eliminated when all you needed was just a bit more to put you in. Any thoughts?
The simple answer is........don't shoot for the cut-off, shoot for the middle of the pack. Or........play two hands, and get the wild card for the final table.
Strategy Yeah and those who were there know which strategy swog chose. :laugh: Glad it worked out for you.
Probably right Rick is probably right, you should only be concerned about being on the bubble for the cutoff if you are down to the end and you are protecting your bankroll. The more hands you have remaining should determine how aggressive you should be about getting off the bubble.
"my new strateegeree" 1st round: starting backroll X 6 ($29,700 for me) 2nd round: all min. bets, play basic ($5,000 for me) Total $35,000 ($34,700 for me, 21 place) tgun P.S. actually Swogs was much better! CONGRATS TO : AMY, RICK, MARVIN, AND THE REST OF THE FINAL TABLE.
tgun Also, a special thanks to tgun and his wife, Jan, for helping to talk applejax into playing after all.
Sucking up big time... UTVOLFAN, you already in suck up mode after your wife cashed for $31,000 yesterday? I don't blame you!....LOL UTVOLFAN it was my pleasure finally getting to meet you and Applejax, wish y'all could have made it for the cruise this year. I am sure we'll see you again real soon, congratulations again Applejax.
Sucking up Yeah I've already resigned myself to at least 6 months of sucking up. I guess the only the only way to escape it is to win 1st place myself next time.
Question for TGUN Was your target from the beginning $30K or $35K. If it was $30K total, would you have just sat on your $5K the next round if you only had made $25K the first round? Were you the chip leader after the first round? If your orginal target was a combined score of $30-35K did you reach your target early in round one and back off, or did you make the $30 by pushing it at the end? The people at my table all zeroed the first round and were shooting for $30K for the second round. Some made the $30K in the first half (10 - 15 hands) while others like me were at one $500 chip and made ours in the second half. Naturally you always wonder, should you have played differently. The only questionable hand I remember was in my run, I had a chance to DD on an 8 or 9 against a dealer 7 or 8 and I chose to just hit. I remember thinking, if I lose this bet I won't make it to $30K, so the risk was to much. I did win the hand, but if I had DD it would have put me over the top, but then again, I might have backed off the last couple of hands too and held when I hit $30K. Never know.
