The tournament with 103 players came down to this final hand with 3 players left, me betting first with no secret, but having a decent lead. Here's how it went down. Hopefully this will help some of the newer players. BR1 - TedinNaples - has 284,500 - no secret - bets 84,000 BR2 - ElderlyEskimo - has 241,000 - secret bet - bets 100,000 BR3 - phatmamma - has 200,000 - no secret - bets 100,000 I figured my bet covered BR3 with a loss by me and a push by him. And my surrender of 42,000 would cover a push by BR2. And my bet gave me enough to double to more than 441,000 (a 200,000 win by BR2) if I had to. Dealer shows an 8. Ted has 9 BR2 has a stiff BR3 has an 8 I figure everyone is going to double since second place doesn't mean anything here. And that's what happens. Dealer turns over a king for an 18. I pray for a 19. I show a 9 for an 18 and a push. Still pretty good. BR2 shows a double bet of 160,000 and busts. So now it's up to BR3. The only way I lose is if he gets an Ace. He draws a 10 to push as well. It took me a second or two to realize I had won, but there it was! What saved me was that on hand 29, I swung both players, winning 43,000, while the other two lost 42,000 and 43,000. Hand 29 in the order of betting was: phatmamma as BR2 with 242,000 bets 42,000 and loses Ted as BR3 with 241,500 bets 43,000 and wins (my bet was to pass phatmamma if we both win, and to pass ElderlyEskimo if I win and he pushes or loses) ElderlyEskimo as BR1 with 284,000 bets 43,000 to match me and loses If you can see any mistakes I made on hand 30 or 29, or if I had a better bet, please let me know. I actually doubled for less on hand 30. I believe it was 80,000, since I didn't need a maximum double if we all won. I couldn't figure the exact amount since I was pressured for time, but it worked out in the end. The unknown was the secret bet of BR2.
Fwiw Looks good to me. In hand 30 you'd covered max bet DDs with your own DD as well as having other options at the low end. Anything down to $78500 would have done the job but that maybe splitting hairs. Plus you can be pretty sure that BR2 isn't going to bet less than $45K so you know you've got the low and the high. Hand 29 looks good to me as well. Of course the pros may see some little nuance that we can't but looks like you did good. And you won for X's sake, what are you worried about? Cheers Reachy
Sweet Ted, I like your moves in both hands very much. Ken's tag line says "there's always a better bet" but for the life of me I can't see a better one in hand 30. You had the perfect number to give yourself the most options possible after the cards were out. Just IMHO. And yes, this means I agree 100% with Joe on something! I haven't seen phatmamma on that site before, at least not under that name. ElderlyEskimo has been a very, very tough player in matches before this one. Give yourself a pat on the back for a job well done!!!
You asked for it Ted, you asked for it. Yes, there is a better bet. I could try to give my usual percentages but there are more than one way of looking at situations like this. Let’s try something else. You gave us the facts, and now how else could you describe your situation? Would you agree that what you found yourself at was: Having to bet first in the last round of the tournament, in front of the two opponents, and having smallest bankroll with two hands to go, in a game with only one winner. That’s a tough spot to be in. You needed lots of luck and therefore you needed to give it a chance – by being aggressive. You could win the tournament if one of the two possible scenarios played out. You swung (or scored a big gain) to both players in the next-to-last round and maintained the lead in the last round, or if you survived the next-to-last round and swung both of your opponents in the last round. Because of inherent for blackjack hands’ correlation most common outcome for a “chaser” is no difference to the opponent, or losing-- therefore it is better to have two chances than only one chance, and you needed to execute your aggressive play rather earlier than later. At a minimum you needed to bet more than the difference in bankrolls, but you should know that there are additional benefits if you bet a multiple of the gap. Most of them (ralative to other multiples) come from betting anything more than twice the gap. You have big enough bankroll to bet that, and max bet of 100K would be better, but not optimal- you will see why in a moment. Of course, you need to weigh in benefits of winning a bigger bet and its other options that it offers against the negatives of losing that bigger bet. Without going into the details, the negatives don’t get much worse for a big bet, because if you lost bet of 43K you would be in almost hopeless situation no matter what would happen to the other two players. You were trailing the leader by 42,500, so you needed to bet at least 86K. You should have bet as much as possible but checked for a few adverse possibilities. You should checked if your double-plus gap bet fitted three times in your bankroll so you could split to three hands – no it didn’t. You should tried to preserve, however small, chances for a “miracle swing” even if you lost you next-to-last round hand. If BR1 pushed you would need to have a chip more than half his bankroll. 284K/2=141K, you needed to keep 142K, so you could bet only 99K from your bankroll of 241,500. If BR2 pushed you would want to trail by no more than a chip less than max bet. BR2 bankroll was 242K, so you needed to keep 143K, so you could bet only 98K. The best bet would be in the range of 86K to 98K, leaning toward making it the biggest. The effectiveness for bets in this range is less important, but it could come from BR1 making unconventional bet where blackjack or double down with your bigger bet could make a difference. Hope it helps, S. Yama PS There are other really rare implications where bigger bet could work better. Just for laughs, if we really want to split hairs, here is one: BR2 surrenders his bet of 42K ends up with 221K, you get blackjack on “good” bet of 86K so you would have 370,500. Your lead would be 149,500 -and lead of 150,500 would be so much better, right?
that was situation with two more hands to play I just received PM, that my above post could cause confusion. It was entirely about situation with two hands to go. BR1 had 242K and bet first 42K. Ted had 241.5K and BR1 had 284K. S. Y.
Thank you so much! S. Yama, WOW! I really appreciate your deep-thought and well-written analysis on hand 29 and what my truly better options were. I'm actually in awe at the detail. Even though I consider myself a pretty good online EBJ player, I have never analyzed my hands/situations that thoroughly. Your post shows me that I have much to learn in order to take my game to the next level. Could you, during an actualy match, with 25 seconds to make your bet, have made the bet(s) you mention? Even with your knowledge, I don't know if I could have come up with that. I will reread and study your post. There's much to be learned. Thank you so much...and thank you for not playing on bet21 and clubUBT!
