Elimination Hands

First a few definitions are in order for this poll:

EBJ – Elimination Black Jack
EH1 – Elimination Hand One (Hand 8)
BRL – Bankroll lowest (smallest chip total)
BRL-1 – Second lowest bankroll
BR1 – Bankroll highest (greatest amount of chips)
BR2 – Bankroll second highest

When playing EBJ in the first round of a tourney, what is your goal when approaching EH1? If you have played EBJ AT ALL, please let me know your response in the poll, answers to justify are nice but NOT necessary. I would like to have as many responses as possible to get some statistically significance in this so to all lurkers, newbies, etc., please help me out here. Thank you.

 

Depends

There are many factors that influence how I play up to EH1 or any EH. Position, variance, quality of oppostiton, etc. Ideally I'd be BR1 from start to finish but that never happens . I like to try and get as many players between me and BRL as possible but sometimes that's not possible. If it's going badly I'll try and hang on until the actual elimination hand itself before busting out though. People do the stupidest things when the pressure is on and mistakes are common on that hand. Hopefully I can capitalise on them.

Thinking about it though, I do actually play for the middle of the pack if I'm not there already so can you change my vote?

Cheers

Reachy

 

The thing that always leaves me floundering in the run up to any elimination hand is the need to assess whether the BRs lower than me are likely to go all-in and thus perhaps disappear, leaving me as BRL when it comes to the crunch.

 

if it's a single table tournament then I gun for top 2 right away, I figure if I go out early I move on to the next one, of course those games are usually over by EH1

For the multi-round tournaments I usually try to keep pace with BRL-1, usually betting exactly what he bets, this way a couple things are likely to happen:

- BRL-1 will stay behind me
- Both me and BRL-1 will win and pull ahead and someone else will take the BRL-1 and BRL spots
BRL-1 swings me but someone else loses out and takes his place, keeping my position the same.
- BRL-1 swings me and I don't pull ahead of anyone else and I have to make a more aggressive move.

This way I can usually play it fairly safe and let everyone else kind of kill each other off. Most of te people playing will fall flat on their face if you let them so all you have to do is be patient, keep your head above water, and the pool will dain eventually.

 

Position

Like others, I say position determines the way I play for an elimination hand. For hand 8, seat one is obviously the hot seat, but seat two and three aren't much better (and seat two could be thought of as worse considering the number of times seat 1 will secret on 8). If in one of those seats, I play more aggressively.

Often in seat 1, if you're playing with less experienced players, you may not want to get too aggressive too soon though because 'crazy bet guy' might be at your table and eliminated before the button passes him. If so, you're on easy street on hand 8 because you're now last to bet instead of first.

As far as what BR position I like to be at on an early elimination hand, that's based on position as well. Ideally I want to pick out a bankroll to my right that is in a position where making a secret bet on the elimination hand wouldn't make sense. I will then shoot for overtaking that BR and once that's accomplished, correlate up through the elimination hand.

 

all good comments

The one pretty consistant strategy I have for approaching the first elimination hand - (all on-line play) - is to keep in mind that if I do not have the lead or BR2 - then I am playing against the middle hands - not the low hands - as the lowest bankrolls will go for all-in hits - and either disappear or double up - either way - they won't be there at the elimination hand -

 

I responded that I go for BR1 or BR2, but I'd note that I never do anything crazy to get there and I often will shoot for anything but BRL.

I also try something that Wong suggests which is to use my knowledge of a player's past habits or play style as can be observed and bet as if I know what those players will bet.

That also of course leads me to try and be a bit unpredictable, which I think can be a good way to go generally as well, especially when playing some of the more successful, experienced types.

And one more point: I throw much of this out the window when playing with 761 of my closest freeroll friends, because when there are 3, 4, or 5 CBG's ("crazy bet guys") several of them seem to gain traction annoyingly often despite being clearly unskilled (meaning: not even possessing a working knowledge of BS)!