First teaser in 2010

Okay, guys and gals,
here is the first teaser for this year.

One person advances. Bets 10 min, 500 max, no surrender.
BR1 bankrol ...535 ...bets 40
BR2 bankrol ...510 ...bets ?
What would you bet as BR2

S. Yama

 

High and low bet's

The two bet's I'd be torn between are:

Playing for the High: my bet would be $350 since betting anything over $10 is a must win situation and betting anymore you might as well bet enough to cover BR1's possible 3 split's and DD's on all 4 hands.

Playing for the Low: $10

Rule of thumb I play by is with only one other player I'd play the $10 and take the low.

 

Have to agree w/ Tx here. In this situation, it's a choice between bombing in for the high or min-betting for the low. Opponent's bet prevents making a bet that permits doubling for the high vs. push, as well as a couple of other low-percentage plays. If insurance is available, the min-bet allows for advancement if opponent takes insurance, too.

 

I would bet $10.00

 

Low or High?

There were two strategies proposed:

Betting “low” so we, as BR2, advance when BR1 loses, regardless of our result.
Or, the other option, betting “high”, so we advance when we win (regardless BR1's result), and also we advance when we push and BR1 loses.

Since BR1 lead was $25 and he bet $40, he “overbet” his lead by $15. We can afford to lose only $10 if we want to advance when the both players lose.

Theoretically, we could win three bets when BR1 would have to push or lose.
Practically this would never happen.
Even when we imagine a seemingly good scenario for this case, when BR1 has 19, dealer shows 9 and we have two Tens. We would need to split Tens and end up with three hands, each total being 20 or 21 (or four hands one being 19 and the rest better than 19). We would be successful only a little bit more often than once in thousand. While staying with the single bet, advances us whenever the dealer ends up with 20 or 21 for the total of 18%. Three wins against BR1’s push 20 have comparable almost null chances.

Success of the low strictly depends on BR1 losing. Most math guys give just under 48% chance for losing.
This can be only very slightly improve by BR1 by never doubling down, and depending on the opponent’s and the dealer’s exposed cards playing “push as good as win, or as loss.”
Still, the total chance for BR2 when taking low (betting $10) is just slightly above 48%.

Now, what is the chance of being successful employing the other strategy?

S. Yama

 

Nice to see the very first teaser in 2010. Let me contribute to this post as well.

The bottomline for BR2 is never allowing BR1 to take both the high and the low against him. He simply needs to bet in one direction or another.

Personally I think taking the high here is a better choice, as besides winning the hand to advance, BR2 also advances if BR1 loses while he pushes (though the chance is so low that I would rather not consider. .

The only thing is if BR2 decides to go for the high, make sure he bets large enough to cover BR1's possible double, split, blackjack win, or simply bet the max ($500).

I think it is not that BR1 "overbet" his lead. If there is a problem with his bet, probably it is that the bet of $40 allows BR2 to take the high while being able to cover his double/split/blackjack. BR1 should have bet the min to take the pure low, or bet the max to prevent BR2 from taking the pure high.

Having said that, I think a better bet for BR1 could be $250. With this bet he offers BR2 a little more confusion: should he take the high or take the low? It seems like both are ok. However, if BR2 decides to go for the high, then it opens up the door for BR1 to double/split to retake the high if needed. That's why betting $250 is slightly better than either $10 or $500.

I have a question: if House Edge does play a role in every hand, does it mean we'd better take the pure low than the high, when both are acceptable?

 

Teaser

I believe your best bet is probably 170. The only reason I believe it is better than 250, assuming you can split more than once, it does allow 3 hands or DD one hand of a split. This allows for the possibility of a 1 bet gain even if you lose one hand of a split.

The only way that BR1 can contest 170 (assuming you win without a BJ) is to get 4 bets on the table. Some combination of splits and DDs where BR1 wins a net 4 bets. I do not know what the % of this is, but it has got to be very low.

So you will win the bet 44% of the time and some of those are BJ. If you lose the hand you are not going to advance. The only thing remaining are pushes. Roughly 8% pushes. This means, in general, that 52% would be your upperend advance scenario.

Just looking at Wong's stuff it appears that BR1 win with BR2 push is about 2% and both push about 1%. This leaves 5% to add to your 44% win number. Looks like you would have at least 49% which is higher than the minimum bet.

Also playing 2nd it may be higher than that, since you can do wierd things if necessary.

Larry

 

Interresting Stuff

I have to confess I would have jumped straight in with a $10 bet, thinking BR1 had left a door open for me by overbetting. However, the numbers do seem to suggest that taking the high wins out, 49% to 48%...

You can get the 5% directly from Wong's table (A pushes and B loses).

As a sanity check, I looked at it both ways :-
Advance
Win: 44%
Push while BR1 loses: 5%
Total: 49%

Don't Advance
Lose: 48%
Both Push: 01%
Push while BR1 wins: 02%
Total: 51%

But BR1 also has the opportunity to do weird things, even playing first, and this may actually offer more benefit. I don't think there would be many strategy variations for BR2, just needing to win one bet.

BR1, on the other hand, has a free hit so long as his total is less than 17, or less than the total of BR2's first two cards, needing at least a push/push to advance.

The fact of BR1's initial overbet suggests that he probably won't play the hand optimally, but if he were to, I suspect that the odds might switch around in his favour, compared to the 'raw' odds obtained from Wong's table, without any regard to strategy variation. [I could be wrong, though.]

 

High bet of $350

My reason for betting so high is you have a free shot to cover every possibility with $350. With no other players to be concerned with and anything over $10 bet gives up the low, why not?

I know getting three splits and being able to DD on all four hands is a long shot, but I've seen it happen several times. Remember the hands don't have to be good DD's, BR1 just needs to get 8 bets in play at $40.

Even with your $350 as BR2 you would only win by $5 if all the bets are won.

BR1 = $535 + $320 (total of 8 X $40 bets) = $855

BR2 = $510 + $350 (BR2 bet) = $860

 

Done.

Good job on working on this blackjack configuration, everybody!
What we are dealing here is not typical “high” bet, where we advance only when we win our hand.
Because BR1 bet more than his lead, we advance when we push and he loses.
In basic strategy we win 43.3% of the times, and push about 8.8%. However, when we push our opponent loses about 5.1%
Colin is right that BR1 can try to take away some of the BR2 pushes by matching his score. But at the same time, playing after seeing BR1’s hand has its benefits, too. As BR2 we don’t double. We should play “push as good as win” when our opponent has a bad hand, and “push as bad as loss” when he has, generally, 20 or higher. Also, we should double second split hand if first is stiff but the second has a chance to be 18 or higher.
With these modification total chance of advancing should be above 49%.
A whole one- percent better than making simple low bet.

Betting high we should bet one half or a third of our bankroll. I am not really sure which one is better. One third of our bankroll would be my preference, it allows us to split three times or improve second split hand by doubling and it is only minimally offset by BR1 being able to win four-bet.
Good suggestion TXTP to be watchful for opponents winning multiple hands. I think being able to offensively three-bet outweighs dangers of opponent winning four-bet that still can be protected by our double. Sure, we may live to see somebody winning eight bets, but in basic strategy it happens about once in 150,000 rounds, and perhaps one in 10 thousands when forced. Not that necessity of winning third bet is common, something like every few hundreds rounds, lol.

Good cards,
S. Yama

 

"Also, we should double second split hand if first is stiff but the second has a chance to be 18 or higher."

Actually there's a more advanced strategy here. I've posted about it before. You double for less on the first split hand regardless of the first two cards. Then you can either double for full on second hand or just hit/stay depending on what the result is on the first split hand. That way you can win either side. Depending on the bet, that should be enough to beat BR1.

My dream is to one day use this brilliant strategy successfully in a tournament. Probably a long shot, even if I play 250 tournaments. My question is: using this strategy, what hands should you split? Because I think you should be overly aggressive with splitting since you have a very good chance of winning 1 out of 2.

 

Bet 145

In order to make a double for less after splitting BR2 needs to bet 145 and double for 75 after splitting. BR2's bet should be 2/7's of his bankroll; this comes to an initial bet of 145. Now a bet of 1/2 of 145 is 75 or 70. A bet of 70 would beat BR1 even if BR1 wins his hand. See the following example where BR2 is delt a pair of 8's and splits:


Plyr.........BkRll.......Bet.............Cards........Action

BR1.........535...........40...........10+9.........Stand

BR2.........510.......145+75..........8+3.........DD
BR2.....................145+?............8+?..........?

Dealer.......................................8

Here if BR2 DD on 1st hand and gets say a 9 for a total of 20, then BR2 can lose the 2nd hand and still win the round if hand 1 wins.

However if hand 1 gets a low card and ends up stiff then BR2 should do a full double on hand 2 on any 2 card total up to hard 15. BR2 should also full double hand 2 on soft 19 (because a undoubled win on hand 2 is no good if hand 1 losses).

By initially betting 145 BR2 is not trying to win 145; but by splitting and doubling for less is giving himself extra chances to win 75.

Also in the above if BR2 is initially delt a pair of 3's he should very likely split the 3's against the dealer's 8.




.................................BlueLight

 

Times up....

These teasers are great, and figuring out the PERFECT play is wonderful training, but the reality is in most tournaments you have only 10 - 20 seconds to make your bet or action before a forced minimum bet or stand is call on you.

My point is you don't have the time to figure out the PERFECT bet or play all the time.

The rule of thumb I used to figure out my two plays were easy and fast.

Taking the low: Keeping more back by simply subtracting what BR1 bet from there total chip count and figure out what you can bet and keep the low should you both lose.

Taking the high: simply figure out the most BR1 can win from their bet (up to 8 bets max., 4 hands, with 4 DD's), bet that amount + the amount behind + an additional chip should you both win.
*Note: this applies to this situation with only two players left.

 

I agree with Rick. You have just a few seconds to decide your bet.
BR1's bet left the low wide open, so take it.
Had BR1 bet 30 instead of 40 it would have been a completely different ball game.

 

One thing to note:

According to one analysis the odds are 49% if you take the high/push option vs. 48% if you take the low. I agree I'd probably end up taking the low here on a quick decision.

But I wonder how much of that 48% is dependent on BR1 playing perfect strategy for his hand. Forget an advanced play (I don't think he has one -- he should play perfect basic if you take the low). But 95% of players will stand on 16 vs. 7-10, 12 vs. 3, not split the right hands, etc. Many of those plays are going to lower his chance of win/push and increase his lose %.

Actually, I guess his optimal strategy would be... push is as good as a win. I think that is basically the same as basic except hit 13 vs. 2,3 and 12 vs. 4,5.

 

This teaser was brought up an another thread which resulted in me analysing the responses presented here. The question was about the effect of surrender on this situation. See

http://www.blackjacktournaments.com/bb/showpost.php?p=47479&postcount=21

and

http://www.blackjacktournaments.com/bb/showpost.php?p=47480&postcount=22