Situation is last hand, only three players left, two advance. The format is the old World Series of Blackjack with power chips that can change the last carded played and surrender is offered. I have two questions; (1) what would your bet be and (2) how would you play out the hand once the cards were dealt? Player #1 (IS ON THE BUTTON) He is also BR1 with $52,000. He bets $14,000, but his power chip is gone. Player #2 (this will be you) You have $43,000 and still have your power chip. Player #3 He is BR3 and only has $26,000 and his power chip is gone as well. What would your bet be for player #2? ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Part 2 Now after you've figured out your bet go to the next step and figure out how you would play out the hand. Now the cards come out: Player #1 catches 10,8 and stands. Player #2 catches A,A and uses his power chip to replace one of the Aces. He catches a 4 for a soft 15. Player #3 catches K,6. Dealers up card is 7. How would you play out the hand as Player #2?
FOR 2 ADVANCE BR2 should take the LOW against BR3 by betting 16,000 With BR1 and BR2 holding back more chips than BR3 has, then BR3 should go all in and hope for a swing against BR1 or BR2. By BR2 betting 16,000 he takes the low against BR3 and passes BR1 (by winning) if BR1 should push. BR2 needs to hit to H16 or S18 after using the power chip to replace one of the A's. The situation is summarized below. ............BkRoll..........Bet.............Cards.........Action BR1......52,000.......14,000..........10 + 8.........stand BR2......43,000.......16,000...........A + ?..........H16S18 BR3......26,000.......26,000...........K + 6..........H19 Dealer.........................................7 BR2's chance of advancing under the conditions above is about 95% .......................................BlueLight
Part 1 :- I'd bet 9,500 Assuming the betting increment is 500 ... Since BR3 only has 26,000, a bet of 9,500 is enough to give BR2 the high, unless BR3 gets a BJ. (And it is also still enough to beat a BR1 push.) Should BR1 bust, 9,500 has the additional benefit that BR2 can surrender, locking up the advancement. The only drawback, compared to a bigger bet, is that even a DD would not be enough to pass BR3's BJ total of 65,000. But I think the benefit outweighs the cost.
My first thought was $11,500...reasons: I can split, DD each split. It's how I play mid-tourney as well -- but I would have gone with 25% stack vs. leaving higher than BR1 with a loss. I expect BR2 to go 50% in or AllIn to catch either a DD or pray for a BJ. Part of what is missing is knowing how the other two have played their hands going through the round. If they haven't been crazy-splits, or risky DDs -- then I'd adjust my wager some.
You have to bet first! Swog, you have to bet before Player #3, after you bet, I'll tell you what Player #3 bet.
How I played part 1 Betting limits are: $5,000 min. - $50,000 max. For my bet I would make an agressive play betting $23,000. My reason was should I hit a good hand I could ride it out and close out Player #3 and if both Player #1 and I win we would tie for 1st. Also by betting $23,000 I was trying to force Player #3 into taking the low. I just feel this gives me the more chances as well as the best chance to advance. This is how it played out: Player #1 was dealt a hard 10/8 and stayed with his $14,000 Player #2 was dealt A/A, use their power chip to replace one of the Aces and caught a 4. Player #3 was dealt a K/6. He took the bait and went low, his bet was $5,000. How would you finish the hand for player #2?
Surrender I would surrender and make BR3 double that 16 to beat me. After your bet you cannot afford to lose by busting or risk standing on a stiff hoping the dealer busts.
nice teaser Nice teaser Rick, and, as usual, great response from BlueLight. I know that numbers without accompanied commentary seems dry but they are (should be) the reason for making final decision. In a mulligan type tournaments discarding one card and keeping Ace (hoping for a Ten to make blackjack) may seem as obvious play – but it is not. Quite a few situations would favor doubling or just hitting. In our case, replacing card to the Ace is better, not by much though, comparing to BlueLight number. Hitting two Aces, and playing to replace first stiff card and hit to hard 16 or soft 18, advances our player to the next round a stunning 93.7%, with perfect play by our opponents. Since BR3 can see all cards, she/he needs to hit to 18 if we end up with hands of 17 or worse, otherwise to 19. From Rick’s post I conclude that surrender is not available. With surrender available, Rick’s bet trying surrender trap was very nice. Without surrender giving your opponent low is too costly. With surrender and 500 bet increments possible London’s bet would be a perfect one. BR1......52,000.......14,000..........10 + 8.........stand BR2......43,000.......16,000...........A + ?.......... BR3......26,000.......26,000...........K + 6.......... If not, then on the down side: A) Don’t lose more than 16K- low to BR3; B) Have as much money left as possible if lost and had to split (c) or three-bet. On the up side there are only two objectives. A) Have more than 52K – covers BR3 win and BR1 push; B) Have more than 65K – covers BR2 blackjack when BR1 wins If we are going to lose and assume BR3 betting more than her gap to us (17,000) and not lose that bet, it doesn’t matter how much we lose, as long as it is less than our lead. We would like to be able to split at least once, but sometimes we need to split to more hands, or double second split hand if the first is not a good one, to come up “net” winning one bet. With BR3 likely going all-in we would like to have 1K left (or more) even if we lose our three-bet. We need to bet at least 10K but would like to be able to bet 16K (our bj coves BR3 all-in bj), or at least 12K (our double bet covers BR3 bj) Value of getting bj over other specific player bj is worth less than quarter of one percent and does not include beating opponent bj by winning a double bet. Chance of three bets is small but outweighs it. Our betting range is now 12K to 14K (have money left after making three-bet). Since we would like to have as much left as possible, if we lose our multiple bet for a chance to have the low -- the optimum bet would be 12K. S. Yama
I just noticed that since BR2 has more than 1.5 times the bankroll of BR3 then a BR2 bet of 16,000 takes the high and low (and also wins the BR2 lose -BR3 push swing) over BR3 reguardless what BR3 bets. This should be better than a surrender trap. Of course if BR3 gets a BJ then a DD by BR2 might be needed depending on BR1's hand. ..............................BlueLight
The first line of the teaser says that surrender is offered. I still don't know if my assumption of a 500 betting increment was correct. I got it by searching for previous posts relating to the WSOB. If the betting increment were 1000, would 10,000 be worse than the 12K-14K range? (Surrender still has value, but now it only ties with a busted BR1, meaning a possible second-place tie, rather than guaranteeing advancement.)
Photo finish needed Yep, London, there it was, in the first line, Surrender was available. Let’s see the differences between bets of 10K and 12K. Surrender a losing hand vs. likely BR1 loss and BR3 win, at half value (tie for second place), is the benefit of 10K bet. Player A winning, Player B losing and me losing in basic strategy occurs just over 6% of times. We need to identify the situation to surrender beforehand. The most common and obvious situation would when BR3 gets bj, BR1 busts and we have a better than 50% chance of losing our hand. Surrendering when BR3 wins, we push, and BR1 loses, or when we would win, takes away from benefits of correct surrender. I would guess that betting 10K and proper surrender might provide gains of less than 1%, but only to an expert player. Benefits of betting 12K vs. 10K can be realized only by our winning double bet when BR3 gets bj and BR1 wins his hand. Similarly, but to a much lesser extend, misidentified situation takes away from the benefits. We just have to avoid situations where BR1 would push or lose and we would win by hitting but lose by doubling/splitting. Being able to protect BR3 bj with bet of 12K should offer just under 1% gains that bet of 10K does not. Another play that practically could be a toss up (with a minimal preference of 12K, lol) Good cards, S. Yama
Surrendered After using the power chip to replace the second Ace and receiving the four, Player #2 surrendered his A/4 forcing Player #3 to DD his hard 16. Dealer flipped a 10 for 17 and Player #3 busted his hand anyway, so Players #1 & 2 advanced to the next round. I'll post another teaser from the same tournament tomorrow.
OK I missed that 2-Advanced. I was trying to find a safe way to get ahead with my plan vs. stay in Top2. And since not enough cards were exposed, we'd never know if the split, DD and kill a card plan would BRolled #2 ahead enough with my action. :joker:
