I saw this play last week-end at IP Biloxi tourney. last hand, 2players remain,5000 max bet, no surrender, BR1-3000, BR2-2000. At stake-entry into finals of 100000 tourney. BR2 bets first and bets 2000 BR1 uses all of his alloted time and then bets 1005. What is his best bet? I am unsure what I would have bet as BR1.
First of all, congrats again on your big win last week! I'm thinking that just about anything between 1001 and 1999 would be equally effective. Colin's 2005 is also good, but would be screwed on a lose-push.
As would any bet > 995. (It's 'no surrender'.) The only benefit I can see from not covering the BJ is that a bet of < 1500 would allow a pair to be split, without giving up the low. I would assume that covering the BJ is more valuable, but my assumptions are often wide of the mark.
London, You mentioned a bet >995 as a good bet. Why not bet 995. It forces BR2 to win his hand and also covers a push . I seems logical to take the lowbased on the 44% chance of BR2 winning his hand. I can't remember Wongs strategies for this type of bet but I think he advised (take the low). BUT As you have already stated the High and Low may be greater than the low and push coverage. I can't argue against that. This particular type of play occurs often and I think is often misplayed. I know many of you have faced this or avery similar play. Would liketo hear your replies. Thanks for your response.
That's Wong's recommendation for when you bet first. Betting second, it's that you should approximately match BR2, or keep what BR2 keeps plus a chip. Betting first, you don't want to bet so much that BR2 can take the low away from you. (This assumes that BR2 is smart enough to realise that would be their best option if you give them the opportunity.) Betting second you can correlate your bet with BR2. This is much more valuable than covering the push. You didn't mention the min bet, but assuming it's > 5 then 1005 would actually be better than 995 for BR1, even acting first, in this particular case. A min bet from BR2, acting second, still could not take the low.
Bet Bigger This one is right on the mark, London. With a bet of 1005 to 1495, which allows the pair split, you'll have to double up your money if BR2 gets a BJ. Most pairs that come around that can be split are tens. Twenty is a nice hand to have if you have the high and the BJ covered, so you wouldn't want to be in a position to have to split them. So you're looking at saving your opportunity to use only BS pair splits. That's not worth giving up covering the BJ for.
London, I do recall, now that you have mentioned it, Wong recommended taking the low only if you bet 1st. If I read your post correctly then the consensus is to cover the possibility of BR2s BJ. Ken advises " there is always a better bet ". I wonder if that is true in this case.
$2005 is what I would bet here. Since you must give up the lose/push (happens about 5% of the time) by betting $1005, you give up nothing by covering the blackjack. But what if BR1 has $3005?
bet 1000 out of 3005 Walt said it. Losing to BR2’s bj with a big bet (>2000) happens about 2.5% of the times. Losing to a bj having chance to take it back by winning doubled bet happens about 3.1%. Giving up straight win vs. covering it by doubled bet cost about 0.6%. The benefits of being able to split occurs on offensive splits needed to win one bet to cover supposed BR2’s regular win, and to win net two bets where splitting is better than doubling against opponent bj –this, I guess, would be worth less than 0.1%. If BR1 has bankroll of 3005 betting 1000 is better than betting 2000 by just over 4.5%, against a good player. S. Yama
