Here's this week's recap of the WSoBJ. Overall, a much more "by the book" tournament than last week's round. Our competitors: Joanna - Queen of Spades. She's a professional gambler who I had not heard of before. Ken Einiger - Hilton MDBJ finalist David Stann - "Bad boy of BJ". Claims to have read all the books and I think I know what book he's talking about. Seems like a math whiz as well as a motormouth. Susan Pikor - This week's Mohegan Sun lamb to throw to the wolves. She claims in her interview to have an A-type personality. Frankly, it would be stretching it to give her a B- in personality. MIT Mike - The second of this group of 5 who couldn't think up a realistic pen name (like Wong?), so he also goes by 1st name only. Hand 1: Everyone's betting pretty small.100-300. The graphics team that I was so fond of last week makes it's first of several mistakes. Mike hits a 13 and draws a 5, which the graphic adds up as 17. The dealer has a 20, so as I figured, it didn't matter. Hand 2: After losing hand #1, David immediately goes into a 300-600-1300-2600-5200 progression with a plan to go ahead by 300. Matt asks if tournament BJ is different than regular BJ, but I think he was just setting Max up. Mike gets a BJ while David busts to give Mike a large lead. Dave's hit of 12 v. 3 backfires, and Matt makes a lame "Darn that book...that strategy" comment. Hand 3: David continues his progression without regard to the fact that likely won't be enough to take the lead. Matt points out that Susan has her own "McManus Brag Book" out, a picture of her poodle, Samantha. Max points out the benefit of "Juju". Dave surrenders. I wonder how that changes his progression strategy. Dealer Tiki busts the players as below-average Melena blabs on about the face cards. Hand 7: Dave has dropped to 6200. Whatever progression he is now on, it will only get him to 8200 if he wins, 1600 out of the lead. Joanna also bets a medium 700, not enough to take the lead. The dealer busts as Dave is off the mat and Mike gets back the lead. Hand 8: Dave, after winning a progression bet, starts another 1/7 progression that would put him still 1200 off of the lead. His plan seems to be to play progression after progression until he eventually builds enough chips to take the lead. I haven't seen that done before, and I'm not sure that the math is in his favor. Hopefully, someone can give me an idea if that's an effective strategy. Matt errs by saying everyone else should bet small providing contrarian betting logic for hand 8. I think he is confused. You don't want to be contrarian with last place, the big bettor. You want to be contrarian to Mike the first place bettor who bet small. everyone bets small anyway, since it's still pretty early. Matt still takes credit for it. Max teaches the public to hit an 18 vs 10, while the dealer hits to 21. Hand 9: Dave progresses to 2500. Everyone else stays small. Dave hits 13 vs. 2. Max implies it's because he's counting cards, which he may be. but given some weird plays later, he may have been playing a hunch. But the dealer busts them all again. Hand 13: In the interrim, Dave must have won his all-in bet, as he's still alive with 8000. He still has a progression going with 1300. Joanna has taken the lead with 10900. Matt points out that Dave is in Mensa, but somehow, I have a hunch that MIT Mike would qualify too. Dave is the only winner to pull him slowly closer to the lead. Melena blabs on again, doing her best imitation of a Star Search spokesmodel. Hand 16: Joanna and Mike are now tied. Dave bets his progression, again just below what it takes to take the lead. I know that this wasn't Wong's intention. Susan and Joanna's doubles don't work. Hand 17: Max finally explains Dave's progression system, and predicts Dave's bet to within 50. Matt pooh-poohs the idea of a Martingale, saying "it's a good idea if you have unlimited funds", but Max defends the idea. Hand 18: Dave's progression, jumping right into the 650 level, is finally enough to take the lead if he wins. Mike plays it safe with a min bet, instead of matching Dave's bet. Dave surrenders on 16 vs. 8, which Max defends as smart. I think Max just likes that he can now predict Dave's bets. Hand 20: There is a second graphic error on this hand, and this one is pretty major. They have Kenny down with a 3250 bet, which must be wrong, since we see only a few blacks out, and he was only at 9700 after hand 18 and was at 9700 at the end of this hand. The announcers also point out that Dave is the one with the big bet out, not mentioning Kenny's hand. Dave calls his own backdoor BJ, propelling him into the lead when the dealer hits to 20. Hand 21: Joanna is down 4300 with 10 hands to go, but only bets 800. I think it's time for her to make a move. Susan is now over 5000, but bets 2000, and Max agrees that she should have bet big. Both of them are now wishing they bet big, and when Dave wants to high five, Kenny says "too slow". Hand 26: Final 5 hands. Mike and Kenny must have made failed moves in the interim, and I would have liked to seen them. Joanna bets too small again (4800 down), while Kenny makes a move. Dave bets a 100 minimum now that he's in the lead, instead of trying to match the field. Susan and Mike don't make their move yet. Hand 27: Ken is over 1 max bet behind, but only bets half of his stack. Max thinks he should bet the max and I agree, as 3100 is probably too little to care with 3 hands to go.Dave again bets too small for my taste, as Mike does not take advantage of the opportunity to take the lead. Joanna's bet is too small again. Dave makes a goofy split and double-down, which makes me question his earlier hit of 13 vs a 2. It seems like he is regretting his 100 bet and wants to make his bet bigger, but it wasn't necessary here. Hand 28: Dave AGAIN bets only 100, and doesn't protect his lead. Mike finally bets big and has a chance at the lead. Joanna still can go over the top, but she doesn't. It occurs to me that with her flamboyant dress and talkative nature that her role as a BJ professional could very well be to play the role of the Big Player, where she doesn't even have to count cards but just know basic strategy, and do what she's told. Ken and Susan are both all in, both the right call. Dave now hits 18 vs a 5, which I can't imagine is rarely the right play regardless of the count. Seeing that his bet is only 100, is he trying to mess up the table? Of course, the golden boy gets a 2 for 20. Susan can't double her 11 vs 5, since she's all-in and they don't grant her a marker. It's a good thing, as she draws to 16, and the dealer gets 19, which would have meant Susan would have owed 4000 tournament chips from her next tournament. Instead, Susan and Ken go out and this is a 3-handed tournament. Hand 29: MIT Mike makes the ideal first bet, forcing Dave to make a big bet over him. Dave obliges, jeopardizing 2nd, while Joanna bets the max, 6000 out of the lead. The graphics are wrong for the 3rd time tonight when Dave's 13225 bankroll is turned into a 900 bet with 12425 remaining. Dave's bet is just enough to take the lead. Joanna has a chance to take the lead by doubling down for less on 11 vs. 4, but incomprehesibly, she does not. She gets a 5 for no help. Dave splits his 8's and suddenly has more money on the table than he wanted. His 8's turn into a 13 and a 10+card, but ends up losing all 3 bets when the dealer gets 17. Hand 30: *Joanna 2,300 Dave 10,525 Mike 13,250 Joanna obviously bets it all. Dave calculates that Joanna can't earn any more than 5750 with a BJ, so Dave holds back 5775, betting 4750. At the time, I was partial to a bet of 2800 as it's enough to take the lead if Mike loses as well as allows him to double down without risking 2nd. But seeing that Dave can double for less, his bet may not be so bad. Mike makes what seems to me to be a huge error by only betting 3000. *Joanna 0 2,300 6 T DEALER: 4 Dave 5,775 4,750 6 A Mike 10,250 3,000 A 6 Joanna figures out that her only shot at 2nd is to win or tie while Dave doubles and loses. To do that, she needs at least a 17, so she figures that she needs to hit. How she figured that out, but not to double on the last hand, I have no idea. She gets a 2, leaving the possibility of beating Dave for 2nd. Dave now makes a critical mistake in my eye. In order to guarantee 2nd place, he doubles for less (total of 5900), instead of taking the golden shot at first that Mike gave him by doubling for it all. In this case, I think he either overthought his strategy, or it never occured to him that Mike would leave the barn door open. But based on how he has played it should have. And Max didn't catch it. To be fair, neither did I at first viewing. Now that Dave is done thinking, he starts talking out loud to distract Mike. But Mike easily decides that his double down is now obvious, as it nearly matches Dave's 5900 bet. Dave's only hope is that he got a double down card that is enough of an improvement over Mike's card. But, all if for naught as the dealer busts and Mike takes 1st place. In the final wrap-up, Max says that Dave was the best player there, but I don't necessarily agree. His progression strategy gave him a lot of opportunity to bust out, and when he got into the lead, he gave Mike a chance to get back into it. Finally, he overthought himself on the last hand when Mike made a mistake, and let a double for less cost him first place, when the basic play was good enough to win.
Again a thorough analysis from our new workhorse toonces. Thanks for laying the foundation for this week's Monday morning quarterbacking. I'll have more to say later, but in the meantime I'll give Kenny Einiger my vote as the best player at the table. Had his chips lasted, he likely wouldn't have made the critical errors we saw on the last hand. The two largest gaffes in my opinion were Mike's too-low final bet, and Dave's failure to make it a problem for him. Mike's gotta cover the double-down by Dave, no question. But, Dave didn't capitalize, doubling for less. Yep, Mike left the barn door open, but Dave was a timid milk-cow, and just stood there chewing his cud. I gotta head to the office, so I'll have to finish up later.
More thoughts, while I have a few minutes: Dave, for all his risky progressions, went into the last hand with only $525 more than he started with. Although the 1/15, 1/7, 1/3 progression that Max alluded to is a valuable tool, I almost never use it. Bankroll conditions change rapidly at the table, and the other players rarely cooperate with your plans. Particularly when used as Dave did here, to just accumulate some extra chips along the way, it's of dubious value in my opinion. However, Dave's bet on the final hand was among the best we've seen so far, simply because he bothered to take into account the possible blackjack by Joanna. That's a level of sophistication that's been missing from the bets so far.
couple of fragments Dear toonces: Thanks again for your fundamental contribution in our weekly conversations. Very good analysis. I'd like to comment just a few fragments. 1) Dave's Progression (300, 600, 1200, 2500, 5000) As we know the probabilities for win-lose-push are roughly 44-48-8 for no doubles, splits and surrender (otherwise basic strategy). If we disregard pushes, then the proportion will become 48-52 for win-lose. Now the probability to lose 5 times in a row is .52 in the fifth power, which is 3.8%. That means 96.2% of success in one progression. If, say, he would play progressions for 25 hands then his probability of not to bust will be .962 in 12th power (here we consider the average lenght of one cycle about 2 hands), which is 62.8%. For 17 cycles P=51.8 and for 18 cycles P=49.8 less than 50%. 17 Cycles is approximately $5,000, and to win that amount of money starting from $10,000 for even money game is 66% (dramatic difference with 51.8%). So, the conclusion is yours. 2) Dave's split (8,8) vs 4 after he saw Mike's stiff. (29th hand) If Dave would split, double and lose all (which happened) the difference with Mike will become more than half a bet. That means double after split action was NOT open, so if Mike split, don't bust and don't double he could lose mostly $1,800 just 1,400 more than Mike with the difference still less than half a bet, but it gives EXTRA opportunity to win at least one bet when the dealer makes a hand. 3) Dave's double for less on the last hand was mistake, because the only think which will make him third is Dealer's 17 vs his stiff - just 5%. With such a good chance to get first by winning full double (49.1%), thanks to Mike's mistake, such a bazzar play. Regarding the best player around the table...Hard to say because there were no good players (just couple of average ones). Best regards, Tirle_BJ
