Blackjack Tournament Strategy
Blackjack tournaments somehow attract players from far and wide. That’s why casino owners would usually organize these events not only to provide the ultimate gaming experience to customers but to help them during slower months.
Blackjack tournaments are quite exciting and if you do well, you’ll surely take home big prizes. But what are the different strategies you can use to win in these kinds of events?
Most players don’t know how to use the good catch-up strategy. This blackjack tournament strategy is used when you’re far behind from the leader. For instance, if you’re behind by $200 and the leader bets $400, then you should bet either more than $600 or less than $200.
If you bet less than $200 and the leader loses the round, then you can be ahead of him. On the other hand, if you bet $620 and both of you wins, you’ll be able to match his bankroll and be in the lead of other players. Keep in mind that the most important hands emerge during the last round.
So if you think that you’re ahead of everyone, then you should only make a minimum bet. But if you see that your opponent is making the maximum bet, then you should match his bet as well.
Example Blackjack Tournament
I’m going to go through a hand-by-hand account of a random tournament that I played in. Hopefully this should show you how different players bet and how you should ultimately approach betting in a blackjack tournament. In this example, only the top two players advance to the next level for a chance to win money.
You can click on any of the pictures to enlarge them.
In this example, one player made a rather large bet and it paid off as they won 1000 on a double down. The split was risky and could have left him with only 500 out of 2000 after just one hand.
There are two different theories to early round betting. You can play it safe and risk little money or bet big early and take a risk. If you win an early big hand, you can let others try to catch up to you. If you lose that big hand, you might be a couple hands away from going bankrupt. Once you’re out of chips, you are finished and you lose.
Playing it safe can allow you to see how to proceed with your betting a little easier because you will know what you need to do. I’ve seen a lot of players bust out before all of the hands have been played. This is an easy way of making it to the next round.
Everyone has settled in now, but I’ve lost my first 2 hands, both times losing 300. Many times, you get the feeling that you are due or you are willing to take a bigger risk. This can lead to early exits.
If you look closely, you’ll see that one of the players is offline. This is the reason that he doesn’t double down when there is an obvious chance to do so.
No one is betting too crazy yet. The more rounds that you have to play, the more you should try to bide your time and try to make a move late.
Round 5 is not shown because it was a dealer blackjack with the ace buried. This can be very frustrating if you happened to have made a large bet.
I’m going to show the next couple of hands without comment. Basically the play goes back and forth for a while with no one really breaking away from the pack.
By this time, you can see one player is about 1000 chips better than everyone else. This is a good time to lower your betting and force the others to catch up to you.
Here is an example of what not to accidentally do. The player at the bottom had 17. The Stand button is between the Hit and Double Down buttons. Be sure you don’t accidentally press either of those buttons when you want to stand because you don’t get a second chance or a warning. In this example, it ends up paying off because he luckily got a 3 for 20.
A little bit of bad luck brings the two leaders down a bit. Although what the one guy is doing doubling down on 13 is beyond me.
A string of good luck for the dealer has all four of us on the edge. There is still a clear advantage for the two leaders, but this is where the last hand can pay off.
When you have nothing else to lose, bet as much as you can on your last couple of hands. I’ve seen people double down on 17 because they know they will otherwise be beaten. You can also strategically surrender half of your chips if you see that others have lost big time.
One of the best strategies when you are far behind seems to be splitting two 10′s. This allows you to bet beyond the maximum bet, in this case 1000.
Here’s where the luck pays off. Take a look at the player on the left side of the screen. He only bet 300 on the last hand. With his blackjack, he only gets 450 to raise his total to 2350 (bet + chips + winnings).
The person who bet 500 won on the dealer bust and has 2400 chips total. Without anything to lose, I bet 1000 and got lucky by also receiving a blackjack. The win bumped my total up to 2600 chips.
Strategically, I understand that I was very lucky here. If neither of us received a blackjack, he would have had 2200 chips to my 2100 chips and he would have advanced instead of me.
This is at the core of what can make online blackjack tournaments simultaneously exhilarating and completely frustrating. Getting yourself into a position to advance is all well and good. But unless you can distance yourself early, it may all come down to your luck on that last hand.