Hey all, I was sifting through these boards and I thought I would share the experience of my first BlackJack tournament: The tournament was at the Turning Stone Casino, it was their New Year's Eve bash. My session started at 2 A.M (ugh), I was quite nervous before I got there, it was a $100 buy in, and at that point I had only won a little under $200 playing BlackJack, but I wanted to give this a shot because I heard how fun these tournaments can be. The $25,000 first prize didn't hurt, either. I watched the first session, got my table and seat, and headed in. The first thing I noticed was that I was considerably younger than just about everyone in this tournament (I'm 19, and there was about 250 people at the tournament, which is amazing considering the ungodly time in which we were expected to function.) I looked around nervously as I waited to start, with the only person I could convince to come with my standing in the background. We all started off with $5,000 in chips, the min bet being $100 and max being $2,500. It was 25 hands with a count after 20, the top player from each table went on to the semi-finals with 2 wild cards each session, and 1 wild card from all the sessions for the final round. I started off with a considerable streak of luck, not losing for 10 straight hands, on the 10th hand, I bet the max, and pulled a blackjack. However, even with all of this winning, I looked around to see that at least 3 people had considerably more than I, they were betting 1K+ hands every time, it seemed. However, a couple hands later, I noticed their stacks had gotten much smaller, and mind continued to gradually grow with the modest bets I was making. At the end of the 25 hands, everyone had busted out trying to catch me. I finished out with $12,550. I impatiently waited until the semi-finals, still charged up from crushing everyone in the first round. We started all over with $5,000 in chips, by this time it was 4 in the morning. This time my luck wasn't as hot, I was spending most of my time trying to catch up to the leader, and my luck never hit. I had one last chance on the 23rd hand when I bet 2,500, my opening hand was 9, and the dealer was showing an 8, so as a last effort to catch this guy, I doubled down, praying I would pull a 10 or an ace. Here comes the double card..... 5.... Two hands later I stood up, completly busted. My rush of victory had subsided and I was already thinking about what I did wrong, when a lady asked me how I did. "Eh, I busted out" "Oh, well, you were kicking butt at that other table." and I smiled.... I left shortly afterwards, because I had a half hour drive home and the lettering on the tables were starting to appear in 3-D, so I didn't see who won, but I had a great time, and even though I didn't win anything from it. I have the bragging rights of saying I crushed the first round of competition and advanced to the semi-finals in a pretty tough format at a ridiculously late hour, I'm already looking to see when the next tournament will be held.
