What does the board think of this strategy? Dealer has a 3-6 up. You have 12 with a small bet up. The person to your left has a 10 or 11 with a big bet up. I have a tendency to hit my 12 since the 10 that will bust me will give my opponent a big winning, presummed, double down the vast majority of the time. Is this a sound strategy? Larry
Sorry, no. Admittedly it sounds good for a moment. By hitting your twelve, you'll either improve your hand if the card is not a ten, or take away a 21 from your opponent if you bust. The problem is that this benefit is exactly counteracted by the bad outcomes when you take a small card off the top and cause your opponent to draw the ten underneath for 21. You taking or not taking a card will not change his average outcome, so the supposed benefit is a phantom one. All you can do is play your hand as optimally as possible. Unless you have other reasons to deviate from basic strategy by hitting your 12 (admittedly not unusual), you should still stand.
Are you going to grimace, if I am sitting to your right and catch that 10 before your DD? I know I do (at least mentally) when someone does it to me.
I was just looking at the odds of this situation occurring. I would normally hit against 2, 3 and 7-A. Four is a borderline hit even in BS. It doesn't take much of a negative deck to hit 12 vrs 4. So I am actually considering only 5 and 6 for dealer. So 2/13th of the time dealer will have 5/6. I will have 12 a little over 8% of the time. The opponent to my left will have 10/11 about 9% of the time. So multiplying them together would mean the situation would come up about 1 time in a 1000 hands. I would have to be content with my chip count at the present time, thus betting the minimum. Assuming we have Ken at my left (not a situation I relish), he would have to be not content with his chip total at the present time and was making probably a catch-up bet (or a contrarian bet) to have enough money on the table to interest me. Something tells me that we will not face this situation and neither of us should lose any sleep over it There is a possibility, however, that the person to my left might be one of those volatile players that get real upset when something like this goes against them. Who knows they might be irritated enough to make a later mistake. But, of course, this is a different aspect of tournament blackjack. Larry
Shoot The Moon Similarly, if that's a strategy you want to try, there are other counter basic moves you would employ, not withstanding going completely counter basic. A few examples would be your 16 or 17 or soft 17 position. Again with your minimum or minimal bet you might also double and split just to take a card. Or in some situations, not take a card to give that person a crummy card. Soon you've become a fortune teller. And then that wraps you up in all kinds of silly mind games that could hurt your normally solid performance. All that said, why not sometime in a small weekly/monthly event just try it. S***s and giggles? Good Fortune HOP.
