The most reasonable strategies include betting less than 2% of your bankroll, wagering on the banker hand, taking craps odds, and making even-money bets in French roulette. These help you pull in consistent wins and limit the risk factor. Playing in Blackjack tournaments requires a strategy quite different from the Basic Strategy recommended at “normal” Blackjack tables. That’s because the objective of the game is different. Instead of trying to beat the dealer, the goal in a tournament is to beat the other players at the table. My BJ tournament strategies at different stages are as follow:-1)Early Rounds a) What are the strategies if all other players are betting small? Strategy: minimum bet b) What are the strategies if all other players are betting big? Strategy: Large bet c) What are the strategies if there are a few wild bettors at the table? Strategy: minimum bet. An important thing to remember when considering strategy is that, unlike a regular blackjack game, you are competing against every other player at the table. In regular blackjack you only need to beat the dealer to win. It may be necessary for you to alter your betting strategy in a tournament in order to overtake the table leader. Additionally, this blackjack betting strategy differs from, say, the Martingale in the sense that you only need to keep increasing the amount if you’re successful. This way, you might recover all the lost money either in a land-based or an online casino. Betting Strategy for Hi-Lo and Knockout Card Counting.

The concept of tournament blackjack has been around for a long while, and tournaments have taken place in live casinos all over the world for many years.

Towards the end of the 20^th century, they had fallen out of favor somewhat, possibly due to the fact that many casinos stopped offering them as they did not want to encourage the use of card counting skills.

However, blackjack tournaments have become increasingly popular in recent years. This could be at least partly attributable to the growth in popularity of poker tournaments.

Casino bosses have seen how many people they can attract, and offer blackjack tournaments hoping for the same effect. Online casinos have also had an impact. Many of them offer blackjack tournaments on a regular basis, making them far more accessible to players.

On this page we explain what blackjack tournaments are all about, and also look at the different types.

Blackjack Tournament Basics

The basics of blackjack tournaments are quite straightforward. The game is still played in essentially the same way, with players trying to beat the dealer on each hand to win chips, but the players are also competing against each other.

When entering a blackjack tournament, players must pay an entry fee. This fee goes into the prize pool, usually with the casino taking a small cut. Entrants then receive a number of chips, known as the starting stack, which have no real monetary value but are otherwise used in the same way as chips normally are when playing blackjack.

A tournament can take place over one single round, or several rounds. Each round is played over either a fixed number of hands or a fixed period of time. Participants play blackjack as normal during a round, winning or losing chips against the dealer on the outcome of each hand.

The order of play changes during each hand, so that it’s not the same player acting first every time. This makes things fair, as players do need to make decisions based on how their opponents are doing.

What happens at the end of each round depends on the exact rules of the tournament. If just a single round is to be played, then the chips are counted up and player positions are determined based on how many chips they have at this point.

The prize pool is then distributed according to the payout structure. In some tournaments, the winner will take the entire prize pool, while in others it will be split among those in the top few positions.

If multiple rounds are to be played, usually some players are eliminated when each round ends. These eliminations are based on the number of chips held, and the remaining players all progress into the next round. The cycle then continues until a winner is determined.

There are, however, a few different types of blackjack tournaments where certain rules vary.

Blackjack tournaments can be categorized in a number of different ways, with most tournaments falling into one or more category. Below is a list of the most common types of tournaments, along with explanations of each.

• Elimination
• Non-Elimination
• Single Table
• Multi Table
• Sit and Go
• Scheduled
• Freeroll
• Guaranteed
• Rebuy
• Satellite

Betting Strategy For Blackjack Tournament

With an elimination format, a number of players are eliminated after each round. It might be a case of a single player with the least chips, or everyone except the two players with the most chips. The exact rules of elimination can vary, but this is the basic idea.

With a non-elimination format, there is usually just one single round. The player with the most chips at the end of the round is the winner, with other positions determined by the number of chips players have at this point.

Players can still be eliminated during the round if they lose all of their chips however.

The difference between these two formats is both simple and, given their names, fairly obvious. Single table tournaments are played on just a single table, while multi-table tournaments are played over multiple tables.

Multi-table tournaments are often played with elimination rules, and the number of tables used then decreases as players are eliminated. The tournament ends up being played on a single table with the last few players.

Betting Strategy For Blackjack Tournaments

These differ purely in the way they start. A sit and go has no fixed start time, and will begin as soon as enough players have entered.

A scheduled tournament will start at a fixed time, with registration opening some time in advance.

Freerolls don’t cost any money to enter, but they still offer some prize money. They are typically held by casinos either as a reward for regular players, or as a way to attract new players.

The amount of prize money on offer is usually fairly low.

These have a minimum prize pool regardless of the number of entrants. The prize pool will be paid out even if the entry fees paid by players do not cover it.

When a casino puts a guarantee in place, it is usually to make a tournament particularly attractive to players, which means that very often the guarantee will end up being covered by the entry fees in any case.

In a rebuy, players can purchase more chips if they lose their starting stack. This enables them to take more risks without the fear of being eliminated.

There is a charge for rebuying, however, which is usually similar to the original entry fee. Rebuy fees are generally added straight into the prize pool.

Satellites do not offer cash prizes to winners, but rather entry into other, higher value tournaments.

Ask twenty-one blackjack players about their experience with the game, and 20 will report back about their adventures trying to outduel the dealer.

Well-timed double downs outdone by a picture-perfect draw. Waves of face cards and aces underneath ending the hand early when they make blackjack.

Wishing for a bust card to come followed by the thrill of seeing it hit the felt. And that wry grin old-timers get when they’ve finished cleaning your clock.

Indeed, the dealer and their cards lie at the center of traditional blackjack. Contrary to popular belief among recreational gamblers, the objective of blackjack isn’t to make a 21 total — it’s simply to wind up with a better total than the dealer.

In fact, the bona fide Bible of blackjack is “Beat the Dealer,” an instructional masterpiece written by mathematician Edward O. Thorp back in 1962. Subtitled “A Winning Strategy for the Game of Twenty-One,” Beat the Dealer was the first book to present both basic blackjack strategy charts and a proven method of counting exposed cards to gain an edge on the house.

But as important as the dealer is to blackjack as most players know the game, a select few specialists enjoy a hybrid version where the dealer is rendered irrelevant.

Tournament blackjack is a clever fusion of casino blackjack and Texas Hold’em poker shootout events.

In case you haven’t heard of a shootout in poker, this format sits ten players to a table in winner-take-all format.

After every table has crowned a winner, those players move on to another table and repeat the process.

Finally, the last ten table winners reconvene at the final table, where the lion’s share of the prize pool is divvied up on an escalating scale.

Blackjack tournaments use the exact same concept, with five players sitting along with a dealer to start the game. Rules vary depending on the house of course, but the basic gameplay structure goes like this…

Everybody begins the tournament with an identical bank of chips, so for the sake of explanation, we’ll roll with the $100,000 used by the short-lived World Series of Blackjack (WSOB). More on that experimental blackjack tournament tour a little later on, but for now, just know that WSOB players started out with $100,000 to work with.

From there, players can bet as they please — using minimums ($1,000) and maximums ($50,000), of course — during the course of a 30-hand session.

To mimic the ramping up of pressure caused by blind bets in poker, blackjack tournaments usually have the minimum bet increase, either at random or on a scheduled basis.

In any event, the goal of blackjack tournaments is deceptively simple. Players are hoping to have the most chips in play at their table when the 30-hand threshold is reached.

This means the eventual winner won’t always be the player who applies perfect strategy pertaining to their hand, but the one who sizes their bets strategically along the way.

To get a full look at the rules used in blackjack tournaments like the WSOB, check out the tour’s official rules below.