Mystic Lake Casino in Minnesota is having a Free Blackjack Tournament every Tuesday of this month. The qualifying round is The Top 135 overall players. The Starting Bank roll is 500 with a $25 min and no MAX bet 14 hands My question is...Any advice for a money management/betting strategy for this type of round? I plan on starting my round late so I have some idea of what I will need to achieve and I think that negative regression betting might be the best play, any advice offered would be appreciated. Thanks Craig Aasen
If it's like previous tournaments there if you're not there early, you'll wait in line for a long time and run the risk of not even getting in. The one I went to started at 4:30, and I got in line about 4:10. It was 5:15 before I sat down at a table. Also, unless you are hanging around the table while waiting, you will have no way to know what people are finishing with. I asked and they wouldn't even tell me the cuttoff the previous week. Another thing that complicates matters is they will probably have a chip which you can use once to double the payout on that hand. It has to be placed with the bet and win, lose or push, it is removed from play. The time I was there someone went all-in($500), including the doubler on the first hand, and pulled a Blackjack. So, he was paid $1500. That being said, I have no idea how much you will need to survive the qualifying round.
Participants? How many entries are there for the qualifying round? This question needs to be answered before anyone can give you an answer.
Participants? well.. This is from the rules: Beginning at 4:00 p.m. and continuing through 6:40 p.m. each week, eligible guests may play in one tournament qualifying round. Players will be taken in groups of up to seven players on a continuous basis during the open play timeframe. Mystic Lake reserves the right to establish a cutoff point in the line to meet the event timeline. If required the cutoff will be made 14 guests into the line
You have a problem Craig Aasen: There are basically 2 steps in devising a strategy for an accumulation round: 1) Calculate the bankroll needed to be among the top XXX. 2) Money management strategy to give you the best chance to achieve the needed bankroll. Now, if you don't know at least the approximate number of players entered, then you can't answer #1. If you can't answer #1, then you can't answer #2. Just by coincidence, Chipsmccoy gave a very good explanation of answering the math part of #1 under the following post: Land Based Casinos HET Millionaire Maker BJ tourney - Good News & Bad News My suggestion is that you don't enter their next tournament. Go as an observer and actually count the number of people who enter the tournament. You can do this simply by counting the people in line and continue counting as more people get into line. Then when the accumulation portion of the tournament ends the normal thing for a casino is to announce the dollar cut-off point for those advancing. You now have 2 very valuable pieces of information that can be used in their next tournament. I know this doesn't give you the answer you are looking for. You need to get more information to do that. Good Luck.
Back from Mystic Lake Toolman, I went out to the Mystic Lake Tournament last night. There was about 460 players (11 tables with 6 rounds) the top 135 players moved on. The starting BR was 500 I never saw what the highest BR was but I did hear a guy say he got over $1500, and I was surprised to see that the bottom 135 people to move on had BR's in the $500 range. So, I guess if I can manage to keep my bank roll it looks like I can make the cut, but if you have a strategy you can share with me I would appreciate it. Thanks Craig Aasen Also, MrBill by 5:15 the line was very short and by 6 or 6:15 there was no line at all.
Let's take a closer look Not so fast Craig Aasen. Let’s see what we have. As I mentioned before, the first step is to determine the BR needed to advance. The standard used to determine the needed BR for accumulation format rounds is Stanford Wong’s “square root formula”. To quote from his book CASINO TOURNAMENT STRATEGY: “There seems to be a simple square-root relationship between the proportion of contestants moving on to the next round and the bankroll required to be one of those lucky ones.” This is not as complicated as it sounds. I’ll detail the steps so you can apply the principal to other accumulation rounds/tournaments. Max bet = entire bankroll Minimum bet = $25 Starting bankroll = $500 Number of hands = 18 Number of players to advance = 135 Total number of players = 450 Proportion of players moving on = 1 out of 3.33 (450 / 135) Square-root of 3.33 = 1.83 Estimated bankroll needed to advance = $915 ($500 x 1.83) Now a word of advice. Attaining $915 does not guarantee you will advance. Rather, it is meant as a guideline. Sometime you will need a lot less and other times you will need a lot more. The large majority of the time, $915 should do the trick. Unique tournament rules and tournament knowledge of the typical player can influence your dollar goal. For this tournament, I see no reason to adjust the $915 objective, except maybe round it to $900. Others on this site may disagree, but that’s my opinion. I’m surprised to see that the cutoff point in the tournament was about $500 (the starting bankroll). This is somewhat unusual and I would not count on it happening in the next tournament. My advice is to stay with a BR objective of $900. Now, how to get there? The general consensus is to bet big and try to get to your objective with as few hands as possible. The more hands you play to try to achieve your goal, the lower the chances of succeeding. Since there is no limit on the amount you can bet, bet your whole bankroll the first opportunity you feel comfortable. All other bets should be at the minimum. Do not risk extra money with double downs and/or splits. Using this strategy, you have over a 48% probability of achieving your goal. Personally, when I play a tournament like this, I’m all in on the first hand. If I loose, then I don’t have to sit through 17 more boring hands and listen to the other players who have no idea of what they are doing. GOOD LUCK. Let us know how you do next week. PS: If I lived closer, I'd play this tournament. Sounds like most players don't know much about tournament strategy. That is no guarantee to success but every advantage counts.
