Finally, online tournaments like land-based

I think BJT will have a good showing there, with maybe as many as 10 of the participants being from here.

I sent in two recommendations to GP yesterday. One, surrender is allowed in this tournament (!), but it has one drawback. The fact that an opponent has surrendered is not apparent until after the hand. In other words, a surrender looks exactly like a stand until the hand is over. I recommended they change that, and make it apparent that a player has surrendered.

Two, how much an opponent has bet is visible, but you have to actually count the chip stack to get it. I recommended that they put each player's bet amount in text on the screen.

I'm looking forward to this Sunday.

 

Are bigger events on the way?

Yes, I know of two other groups that are actively working on full-blown tournaments, plus the Global Player events. It's just a matter of time before we have frequent nice-sized events available on the net.

 

Yes, if you download the software, you can visit the live multi-player tournament tables during the event. You can also view histories of the previous events.

Tonight Xanax and I fought an intense last second battle to get qualified for the other Global Player tournament which is the Gamemaster tournament. We played leapfrog along with a third player in the final 5 minutes of today's qualifying. As time ran out, I won a bet to regain first place and a seat in next week's semifinals. But... the clock ran out just before I got the bet down and Xanax picked up the one seat awarded on Friday's play. I've got a good shot at snagging tomorrow's seat though. Note that this is not the event we've been discussing in most of this thread. Congrats Xanax, what a battle!

 

I finally secured my seat in the GMO semifinals tonight , but not before some serious risk. I actually turned my $410 into $175 en route to a final $539. Neither of the other two competitors chose to challenge me in the final minutes. They were either not online or they were unwilling to risk dropping substantially on the leaderboard with 2 spots left available over the next two days. Historically, I've really struggled with this format. I usually tend to squander several buy-ins before finally throwing in the towel. (For those that haven't looked at the rather obscure format, there becomes a point of diminishing returns as you buy-in multiple times.) It definitely can be disappointing to realize I've blown $500 in live money trying to get into the semifinals of an event where I can only win $1000!

I think the multi-player format has the potential to be much more popular.

As for the two serious online blackjack tournament plans, they're both new creations. One is being put together by a friend, and the other I actually know little about other than that they're working on it. As soon as more info is publicly available, you'll hear about it here. In the meantime, I don't know more publicly or privately.

 

GP's MultiPlayer tournament starts in 1 hour

We're getting close to start time for the first-ever fully multi-player blackjack tournament online. The times can be confusing in different time zones, so here's a brief summary:

3 PM Eastern
2 PM Central
1 PM Mountain
Noon Pacific

So far, 42 players are registered of a possible 60.
Sign up here:
https://cashier.global-player.com/tournament.html?gai=100284

 

Doh! Of course this isn't the first-ever, it's the second-ever. I was out of town for the first one a week or two ago.

Also, be sure you read through the rules so you have an idea what's going on. There will be randomly awarded wildcard seats into the semifinals and finals, but you have to be "at" a table as a visitor to be eligible. Also, be sure to log into their chat as well, where any questions or problems can be addressed.

 

Yikes they've got trouble today. Tournament restarts at 3 PM Central, 4 PM Eastern. They're working hard on resolving the issue.

 

My luck ran out in the semifinals, where I think I lost all 8 hands I played. My table was pretty conservative, so I was betting $5 instead of $1 by the third hand. You know how it goes from there: Lose $5, lose $10, lose $10, lose $20, lose $24, lose $24. Done.

Well, I'll give Global Player a mixed review on this one. Technical issues caused the entire tournament to have to be restarted. Quite a few players at 3 PM found that they were unable to bet, hit or stand. Meanwhile, a few tables were running fine. I think they made the right call by terminating the event and restarting from scratch. Of course, a few tables had made it to hand 10 or so, so there were bound to be some ruffled feathers. TxTour had a nice lead going, and his luck was awful after the restart, when he was gone after only a few hands.

Despite that, and the inevitable errors made by players who weren't familiar with the playing process, I'll look forward to more of these events. They've taken into account the recommendations on displaying who has surrendered, and they've always been very receptive to ideas.

Bottom line: It didn't run as smooth as it should have, but it's a good start.

I think I'm going to put together a BlackjackTournaments.com sponsored event there. More soon.

 

Nice showing, BJT!

Of the 42 participants in today's event at Global, 3 out of the 5 finalists are members from here. Going into the last 30 hands are these finalists:

selecti (selecticom here)
Rick267 (TxTourPlayer here)
RiverRat (pokernut here)
datal or data_life (not a member here as far as I know)
Rob21 (also not a member here)

Congrats, and best of luck in the next 30 hands.

 

Congrats to Selecticom, who picked up the first place prize of $1000