Cover Double with Double or Cover Two Swings?

The lowest BR2 can insure for to win the table if BR1 fails to correlate the insurance bet is 1,875.

- If BR2 insures for 1875 or more, BR1 fails to take insurance, and the dealer doesn't have blackjack, BR2 will NOT have enough chips left to double all-in to retake the high.
- If BR2 declines insurance, he WILL have enough chips to double all-in to retake the high.
- If BR2 takes insurance and BR1 insures for enough to cover BR2's insurance bet, BR2 will lose if the dealer turns up a blackjack and cannot double to cover the high if the dealer does not have blackjack.

In other words, BR2 taking insurance is making a tradeoff. He trades off being able to double to cover the high for the chance of inducing a mistake by BR1 (not correlating insurance) AND having the dealer turn a blackjack.

Is this tradeoff worth it?

Acting quickly and apparently carelessly is contagious in blackjack tournaments. So is taking your time and being deliberate.

The complexity and mathematics of this situation would require any human or simian to take his time to avoid miscalculation. However, you need to act quickly so that your opponent is more likely to make the mistake you want.

Generally speaking, is it worth it to risk making a suboptimal play for the sake of acting quickly enough to induce an opponent's mistake in this kind of complex situation? Why or why not?

 

You didn't miss anything. I should have stated that BR2 will take the high and force BR1 to double down to maintain the correlation.

I'll give some other folks a chance to post before I reply further.

 

We try to avoid situations like the one I faced as BR2 in this situation. But it can't always be helped. I was BR1 on the second-last hand but fell victim to a full swing on that hand.

Salvaging as much as possible from these situations where you are behind and out of position is important to your long-term win rate.

Inducing opponents' mistakes is an important principle in casino tournaments, and in the case of being behind and out of position can offer you the best chance at getting some wins. To induce opponents' mistakes we need to act fast. As stated previously fast, apparently careless action is contagious at the table. This means risking the possibility of making a suboptimal bet size ourselves.

The Professor was correct in stating that in all likelihood BR1 will correlate our double down bet - thus not making the needed mistake. As Gronbog stated earlier, the insurance bet- and doing it quickly - was our best chance of inducing a mistake by BR1.

We all understand the importance of bankroll management in a blackjack tournament. What has gotten much less discussion over the years has been time management. How much accuracy should we trade off for the benefits of acting quickly? Under what situations should we risk this accuracy? Can we break this down mathematically, possibly using game theory and fuzzy logic principles?

In this situation when I saw the dealer give herself the Ace upcard, I immediately recognized that an insurance mistake by BR1 was my best shot at winning this table. The dealer pointed to BR4, then BR3 in rapid succession because she knew they were all-in and couldn't take insurance. Then she pointed to me. I quickly calculated that I needed to overtake BR1 by more than 4,700, which was the chip deficit. I didn't take the time to factor in the difference in our initial bets. I didn't have time to do that accurately. I quickly as possible counted up 2,400 chips and placed them in the insurance circle. I did this so fast that I didn't even realize the possibility that the excess chips lost in a failed insurance bet might make the difference between having enough to double for the high and not having enough. Only after the action was over did I realize that it would've made no difference. To summarize, I risked making my own error in order to induce a bigger one from my opponent.

By the way, BR1 failed to correlate my insurance bet, but then the dealer did not turn a blackjack. So BR1 made the mistake I wanted, but the cards didn't cooperate with me.

Do you agree or disagree with this psychology driven approach to a blackjack tournament problem? Can you come up with some hard math and logic to support your assertion?

I'll share with you the final results of this hand in a later post, which will also bring up another topic important to card players.

 

Just some more thoughts on the importance of speed and its benefits:

It's baked into our language. The word "hustler" has "hustle" as its root word, implying the importance of speed in inducing a mistake from a person. We're all familiar with the term "pulling a fast one," which implies the same thing. Fast talkers and quick change artists rely on the same thing.

In a more legitimate vein, we see that relief pitchers in major league baseball usually act quickly on the mound, in order to deny the hitter a chance to gather his thoughts and communicate with his coaches. Surprise attacks and other troop movements in military campaigns always emphasize speed, in order to sow confusion and disorganization in the enemy. We have speed limits on the roads mainly because drivers can't think and react quickly enough to changing conditions if they are driving too fast.

In the normally cerebral game of blackjack tournaments, speed kills. So you like to induce your opponent into acting too quickly.

 

The contagion doesn't always spread to others at the table. But in my experience it usually does. I can't remember the last time someone who wasn't a known expert slowed down the game after one or more fast-acting moves by players acting before them on a last hand.

It doesn't have to work every time. Human behavior being what it is, you can never manipulate others with 100% reliability. 2/3 reliability is what you're looking for. A 2/3 estimate can be thought of as a "strong possibility."

 

If you have a solid read on your opponent that there is a strong (2/3) possibility that he'll overthink it and make a mistake that way, this is a great strategy.

The important thing I am driving at here is the psychological game. Making reads like this is a big factor in excellent card play.

 

The insurance mistake seems like the most likely type of mistake we can induce.

Is there another mistake BR2 could induce if the deficit were, say, 1,500 instead of 4,700 and we haven't seen the cards yet?

Is there a way we can induce a mistake if we are the chip leader by 1,500 acting first?

Is there a way to give mathematical treatment to the fuzzy logic of human behavior in the context of inducing opponents' mistakes in blackjack tournaments?

 

I like using a Bayesian method in which we assign a two-thirds possibility to a human decision that seems like a strong possibility. This is actually very close to a 68% confidence interval that is defined by one standard deviation.

A human decision that seems like a fair possibility can get a one-third possibility. In other words, there's a strong possibility the human opponent will not make the decision, but a fair possibility he will. Sometimes a fair possibility is all you need.

If you have no idea whatsoever, or if you estimate a coin flip, use 50%.

We can then apply these percentages to the hard probabilities that we understand in a card game to obtain reasonable estimates of EV, win rate, etc.

 

Here’ how the hand turned out in real life:


BR4 bankroll 1,000 bet 1,000 cards hard 16, no insurance, hit, bust

BR3 bankroll ~8,500 bet ~8,500 all-in cards hard 20, no insurance, stand

BR2 (me) bankroll 18,000 bet 9,000, cards hard 14, insurance 2,400, double all-in, bust

BR1 bankroll 22,700 bet 10,000, cards 55, no insurance, hit, hit, bust

Dealer Ace, 6, T

BR3 advanced to the final table.



Why did I double all-in? At this point I was hoping for a miracle swing. I didn’t have the chips to cover a win by BR1. If I had been more on the ball I would’ve taken free hits to a total of 18. Who knows? Maybe BR1 might have doubled down mistakenly and gotten stiffed. The way the cards came out it wouldn’t have mattered anyway, but we don’t rabbit hunt here on blackjacktournaments.com.

Earlier in this thread I alluded to one more topic important to card players that I wanted to bring up, that is relevant to this hand. The topic is tilt. Tilt is why I doubled all-in when I didn’t need the extra money in this hand.

The poker coaches define tilt as any state of mind, brought on by any cause, that impairs our thought processes. Tilt doesn’t have to be anger or frustration. It can be boredom, sleepiness, or distraction. It has many causes. The usual causes are anger at another player or frustration with bad luck.

But it can be caused by self-doubt caused by having made a mistake. It can be distraction because of a football game on one of the TV monitors. You might have a headache or a cold that day, taking you off your A-game.

I have to confess I’ve been a bit tilty lately, in my home life and professional life as well as my card games.

Tilt can have disastrous consequences in a blackjack tournament. It can cause you to deviate from a well-considered middle round strategy. If you’re not on your A-game, you might not recognize a situation, such as needing to hit to a total of 18 instead of doubling all-in. Keeping track of all those bankrolls and then doing the arithmetic to calculate a bet in a last hand situation is mental gymnastics for the best of us. If you’re not on your A-game, you simply can’t do mental gymnastics well enough to get an advantage.

How can we get control of tilt? How do we prevent tilt to begin with, both on and off the table? Do you folks have any thoughts on that?