I played in the weekly event at Pearl River Resort last night. In the semifinals, one player advances to the final. With 3 hands to go, I found myself in this situation. Betting is $5 to $200, no surrender. Player A: $935 bet $200 Player B: $600 bet $200 Player C: $1057.50 bet $200 Player D (Me): $1020 bet $155. (There was another player in the 500 to 600 range, but I don't recall the bankroll, so leave them out.) Now, what should I have bet instead?
Ok Some suggestions: $5 - bet against the table $200 - correlate the table $120 - High low over BR3 and BR4, low over BR1 $160 - High low over BR3 and BR4, low over BR1, beats BR1 with a BJ. So on balance I'd go for $160 Cheers Reachy
Pearl River Quander My bet selection as BR2 would be wager $120. Apply a 40% opposition wager. Now if all win you remain BR2,. all lose you become BR1. Also if BR1 and you both lose you become BR1 with 2 hands remaining to be played.
Good bet In between $120 and $160 all do the same thing, win keeps you in BR2 (without BR3/4 DD or splitting) and should everybody lose you'll take the lead. I have no problem with your $155 bet. I hope it worked out for you.
To answer Reachy's question... There is this hand, plus two more in the round. Deciding on my $155 bet, I just knew I wanted to keep the low by a small amount over BR1. $155 kept a $7.50 low, but when BR3 doubled for the full $200, I realized that my double wouldn't quite cover it. If I had bet the full $160, I would still have had a $2.50 low over BR1, and a double would take me to $1340, compared to BR3's double win going to $1335. As it turns out, the dealer turned up a 3 (or 4), BR1 stood with 19, BR3 doubled 11 and made 19, I doubled a 10 and made a stiff, and the dealer drew to 19. Down to $710, I lost another $400 on the next hand to kill my chances.
Ken Im taking it you lost track of all the player totals and made a slight error to the lowside. For me, a player to complete 1 year of BJT in May, the hardest thing is to keep track of is more than one players total. During the late hands adrenaline is flowing like the Rogue River and even during countdowns more than one total boggles my mind. I usually have to recount the leader and key off that. For me this is the hardest, besides a table of wildcats, thing about BJT. I have read your recent article in BJ Insider and think you are still working on this running total of players chips; do you think this is the hardest or one of the hardest things to learn is multiple chip management? Its so easy at home playing online or reading a teaser post, but at the live table its hard.
Keeping the running totals of multiple bankrolls is indeed a hard skill to learn, but I still find it easier than the endless counting and recounting that the other way entails. In this case at Pearl River, I had all the totals in my head (except the one in the 500 to 600 range that I still don't know), I just didn't consider 935's double-up in my bet decision. So it was more a procedural error. If you're in an area with weekly live tournaments, no matter the size, play all you can. Try out both methods of handling the chip counts, and see which works best for you. For improving your ability to handle multiple bankrolls, add them one at a time. If you've been mainly focusing on just the leader, next time make a conscious effort to remember both BR1 and BR2 after the countdown.
Chip Counts anyone? At the countdown hand I only know who's 1st and who's maybe 2nd. When the dealer calls out players chips I can only remember one number and that's gone after the next hand is played. ..............................BlueLight
