When the House's Pit Manager tells you to organize a BJ Team....?

...to take on the county casinos' BJtourneys, how kosher are we talking?

Today, I was told that I've done enough research on the driving distance games in county (and a little beyond) and know the best local small tourney players I should pull a team together. I have 6 who said "hell-yes!" within the hour of this conversation.

My head's a little tilted off-kilter on this one. The Pit Manager who told me about it was a WSOP dealer (top levels), told me about the Senior Tour game where there were two Srs who "teamed up" to bully out the 3rd on the final table and "bracelete chopped", and said with the right plan for tourney play -- we could rake it in, as the people I want are all final money players at the tourneys I'm playing in anyways.

It's a case of how cool are we talking? Do go public or go quiet? Do we split winnings "in the parking lot later"? Has anyone done this besides with their spouse/SO/Best Friends?

 

Really Bad Idea

All gambling tournaments have their own set of rules, but in general, collusion between players is either illegal or, at the very least, inappropriate. There are times in tournaments where it is natural from the situation for players to collude. For instance, take a craps or baccarat tournament where one player is substantially ahead, and two other players are chasing him. The best approach for the players behind the leader are to make big bets in opposite directions. That way the leader cannot match their bets and the chasing player who wins then only has to contend with the leader since the other chaser is now out of contention. It would clearly be wrong for one of the chasing players to openly discuss the situation and encourage the other chasing player to bet opposite. That would be open collusion. A similar situation occurs in holdem poker tournaments when they get to the final table, and each money position is worth more money. When a small stack gets all in, there is generally collusion among the other players in the form of not betting any further on that hand. You want to maximize the chance of eliminating the short stack and having everyone move up in terms of prize money. Discussing this situation (either verbally or in a chat box if you are playing online) is usually not allowed.

If you do set up a team, other players will probably realize what is going on, and the complaining will start. Complaints to the casino, complaints to gaming commissions, complaints to anyone who will listen. This never leads to anything good. If you do decide to go ahead with this, you should certainly keep as low a profile as possible. I formerly ran a team of tournament players, mostly in craps or baccarat tournaments, but occasionally in blackjack tournaments as well, so my comments are based on actual experiences.

 

OK, this is all good feedback. And in poker or other "pot-play" tournaments, I can see where ganging up can be definately complaint gathering.

It was with blackjack where things got, well, interesting. It's crazy enough when at SY we end up with 2 sets of spouses and an odd-man or two on the final table. Chopping happens usually with the final 6, or after one gets knocked out by playing one hand to make the table legit (and someone does something stupid and goes all-in). Right there you kinda have two "teams" playing with the spouses.

So, if we were to do this, we'd have to hit a tourney where we didn't know anyone else there......probably not happening down here in San Diego. LOL I'm getting known because I'm so damn outgoing in personality. And two of the others are dealers who want to play as well.

Hmph...gotta think about this harder...

 

Team Play

Sandy

A couple of ways of looking at this. If you are talking about 'teaming up' in the sense that you would coordinate your play to advantage the team over other players - that would be considered collusion and cheating. It could get you thrown out of a tournament. If you are talking about playing as individuals, but sharing the winnings among the 'team' members - that would not be unusual, nor would be unethical, as long as it did not affect how you played. Maybe something like the winning team members cover the buy-ins and rebuys for those that don't cash? Or the team members that cash putting a portion of their winnings into a common pot that everyone would get a share of?

 

R,

That's more along the lines I was thinking...we all go in, play separately to our individual best -- and split total won among the # who were in. Kinda like when Husband/Wife would be playing. Or Husband/Wife/Son/Daughter do as in one case at SY.

In this case, it's 4 or 5 non-related players who all know each other with the hopes that we all (or more than half) hit the final table. Play hard, take out each other like we would normally do, and then split the winnings. If that's not considered collusion, then I guess we'd be kosher.

Now, if there was ever Team-BJ...like Bridge...oh, man, we'd be in trouble...

 

I used to play a weekly craps tournament just about every week. There were at least 2 or 3 teams that played every week. Usually, the course of action was for one guy to bet his entire bankroll on the Pass Line and his partner bet his entire bankroll on the Don't Pass Line. Even though one of them would be eliminated, the other would double his bankroll on the first roll. That would usually be enough of a head start to get him to the finals. (the top 3 advanced) By doing so in a couple of rounds, they could usually get at least a couple of members into the finals and do the same thing. Since this tournament had a big overlay, it was profitable if they cashed in any of the 5 spots that the tournamnent payed. If they could get into the top two spots, it was very profitable.

It wasn't too long before the players playing as individuals took notice and began to complain. The casino took a very active non-collusion course of action and this behavior began much less common. The people working the tournament hated the extra headache that came withy watching for collusion and disqualifying people for those actions. I believe that the collusion issue contributed to the early demise of what was a pretty lucrative tournament series.