Okay Tomorrow is Wednesday and there is a local tournament. I am going to play the newbie and I need a strategy critique; mainly because I am tired of tanking this tourney. Here are the tourney basics… 6 deck shoes. 83.3% shoe penetration. Dealer hits soft 17. Double After Split. Ace Splits get 1 card no Re-split. Blackjack pays 2:1. 20 hands played. $5 min no max Dealer button in play. Six players seated at 4 tables each Round. 3 total rounds (Quals 3 session, Semi, Final). $25 Real gets you $1000 tourney re-buy is first round next session total of 3 first round sessions. Two Top chip leaders advance from Quals Top chip leaders advance from Semi Top 6 split buy in pot in finals. So here is my thought process basic tourney unit is $50 Because of the rules Basic Strategy Advantage is 1.65% over. I play advantage using the KISS III Strategy which adds 0.75% over. Making my advantage 2.4% over. My Off the Top is $260. If I lose TU= $35, if I win TU= $65, if I blackjack TU= $80. I play advantage strategy for remainder of shoe. Watching bets & chip levels if I get behind in chip lead I will start splitting differences when the advantage is only slight (17 or +6 true). There is usually a shuffle between hand 10 and 6, depending on standing I will $260 or hedge at $10. I hedge at $10 so I can take insurance at $5 “Cuz I hope the dealer has it!” I color up to $500 chips (pink) when the bet warrants and I try to be first at the table with pink to get the psych advantage. Recalculate TU at 5 hands left if the deals have been in the house favor and I am not top or bottom. I try never to go all in last hand. I welcome any and all tips or comments. The other thing to remember is if it wasn’t for bad luck I wouldn’t have any luck at all.
Until somebody explains just what the heck a "Tourney Unit" is, I can't answer your questions, BUT: I can tell you that coloring up your chips like that is only making your opponents' lives easier. Much easier to count a stack of two $500 chips than a stack of 40 $25 chips.
Kiss III ee4life66, what's the Kiss III strategy? Is that where you got the terminology in your post such as "TU" and "hedge?" You obviously are a gambler who likes to educate yourself. That's good. Here are three resources for you for blackjack tournaments: "Casino Tournament Strategy" by Stanford Wong is a must read. Though some of the strategies are dated, most are spot on and the explanations are good. "Play To Win" by Ken Eineger has good information about playing blackjack tournaments. "How To Win More Blackjack Tournaments" by Ken Smith (the administrator of this website) is an e-book with the most up-to-date strategy tips for players at all experience levels. You'll want to get this one. Blackjack Insider is an online magazine with an archive with dozens of blackjack tournament articles.
I'm having a hard time understanding the post that started this thread because of the lack of standard terminology normally used by Blackjack Tournament players and the infusion of terms that are foreign to me. Yes, I can guess at what these terms mean but I'd rather not. Tourney unit? What is that? I think I know what you mean but I've never heard that term before: Off the TOP? What is that and how did you arrive at such a odd amount? This really needs some clarification - why restrict this to 2 amounts? Sometime a bet between these amounts is warranted and sometime a larger bet than 260 may be warranted. Betting $10 is Okay if warranted, but the logic of doing it to possibly take insurance escapes me? Recalculate to what amount? And whats involved in the recalculations? My questions are only meant to demonstrate the difficulty of understanding your play and I really do not want answers to each individual question. Rather, restate your whole strategy in standard terms that the typical tournament player can understand. That being said, I think the problem here is the lack of tournament strategy. The plays generally seem to be geared toward winning against the house when in actuality you are playing against the other players.
Your Focus seems wrong to me You seem to be focused more on card counting and betting with your advantage than in competing with the other players at the table. Even in a game that pays 2:1 on blackjacks so that you have an edge, your focus should be more on trying to be someone who advances at your table as opposed to someone who wins money at the table. Most serious blackjack tournament players will tell you that card counting is of small enough value in tournaments that even people who usually count cards when they play blackjack in a casino don't bother counting when they play in tournaments.
Monkey, KISS 3 is the unbalanced count described by Fred Renzey in his book "BLACKJACK BLUEBOOK 2. As for the other questioned terms in the post, I have no idea. I would recommend that the question posed on this thread could be answered more readily by concentrating on "Betting Strategy and Chip Count", as they relate to BJ tournaments. You have already mentioned three excellent books to help one get started.
Memories toolman1 reminds me of my exwife. When she suspected I was cheating on her, she asked me 7 or 8 questions and promptly said she didn't want answers! I didn't ask her to restate anything in standard terms. Billy C
Thank you for all the help Everyone has helped tremendously even though if you read the threads you might not notice it; thanks for everyone’s time. Here is my basic problem, and it is probably true for a lot of veteran Blackjack new tournament players. There appears to be two totally different worlds out there: “Advantage Play Blackjack” where you try and “Bring down the House” and “Tournament Play Blackjack” where luck and money management rule all decisions to get other players money. Each world has it’s own vocabulary which is why I never understood the BRx terminology, theorems behind the makeup bet mathematics, why the chip count drills in CVBJ V4 would ever be useful and why there are questions about my post on base unit calculations, divisional wagering and the doubting that advantage play would ever be useful in a tournament. With all the veteran Blackjack players writing tournament books I naively thought the tournament transition would be simple. I figure the Stanford Wong book will be the Rosetta stone I am missing to successfully merge the two worlds, mainly because I have most of the other information plus all of Gamemaster’s musing. That will give me 18 days and two minor tournaments to solidify a new strategy for the first big money local tournament. FYI: it came down to the last hand of the semifinals. BR1 (me) => $1690 BR2 (nickel girl) => $1040 BR3 (mr all in) => $1600 I had to protect my self from BR2 even though she was betting $5 all round and I had to assume BR3 was going to play in his normal all or nothing style. Advantage was neutral at 12 (or +3) 1.5 hands out of the shoe. BR1 bet $1600 BR2 bet $500 BR3 bet $100 BR1 A/6 … Hit 7 Hit 3 BR2 9/9 … Split ... 9/6 Stay ... 9/7 Stay BR3 10/10 … Stay Dealer 7 up ... flips a 9, hits an A BR1 … Push BR2 … Lost / Lost BR3 … Won I missed the finals by $10! Feel Free to have fun with another critique and next time I should be able to speak in your language.
