Blackjack Tournament

[Gronbog]

mhb does bring up a good point about the difference between live money events and buy-in events for play chips. In the former, if you lose money, it's your own money and that would certainly make some folks play differently. Perhaps those of you who remember these events could enlighten us regarding how much money you had to put up for how much of a prize pool and other properties of these events.

Having never played one or even seen one, my first thought would be that you would have to estimate how much it would typically "cost" you to play the tournament properly and to factor that into the tournament EV. As well, there must surely be other factors which would affect the strategy of the end-game. Just off the top of my head, I would assume that you carry your chips from round to round, so you would have to be careful not to cripple yourself in trying to advance.

Perhaps this topic deserves its own thread.

[Gronbog]

If I understood Gron correctly the counting bots have struck out never winning.

You have misunderstood me. My fault for not being more clear. The simulations are of millions of tournaments. The performance of each bot is evaluated based on their accumulated performance over those millions of tournaments. While the performance of the counting bots is consistently worse than their non-counting counterparts, that does not mean that a counting bot has never won a simulated tournament. They just advance less often, cash for less and win less often. In fact, even the "stupidest" (is that even a word?) of my bots wins a percentage of the simulated tournaments.

[Ouchez]

Some of the best Tourneys left are held at the Kewadin Casinos in the MI U.P., and pretty much anyone can buy the package to play in the tourney, a two day event with $30,000 going to the last table, and has often been won by almost rookies, even though some of the GREATS are usual competitors.

For those interested you may want to play these excellent tourneys.

Ouchez

[mhb]

mhb does bring up a good point about the difference between live money events and buy-in events for play chips. In the former, if you lose money, it's your own money and that would certainly make some folks play differently. Perhaps those of you who remember these events could enlighten us regarding how much money you had to put up for how much of a prize pool and other properties of these events.

Having never played one or even seen one, my first thought would be that you would have to estimate how much it would typically "cost" you to play the tournament properly and to factor that into the tournament EV. As well, there must surely be other factors which would affect the strategy of the end-game. Just off the top of my head, I would assume that you carry your chips from round to round, so you would have to be careful not to cripple yourself in trying to advance.

Perhaps this topic deserves its own thread.

my experience is different,
the frontier and 4 queens were the benchmark tournaments with hefty entry fees and live money action that also allowed rebuy ins if you lost the first round, and they often played single deck with las vegas rules.
there were rooms and gifts also involved.
I was an mba student at unlv las vegas at the time and I wrote a term paper on the marketing of casino bj tourneys that was well received and I noted that the casinos to their great advantage were able to get hundreds or thousands of bj decision plays at high bet levels against basic strategy -- truly wild plays at high bet levels.
this concerned me much to protect my br and that is why I became biased in favor of card counting during tournaments and refraining from deviations except under obvious situations on last hand. I suppose I was lucky but I was a noted winning player. at that time wong had written his book on tourneys and there were a few others. I thought they were too complicated for me. this was some 20 years or more ago.
a losing streak in these tourneys could be very costly and one could easily pick up bad habits and if low discipline get carried away with the deviations of tourney tactics and strategies and find oneself in devastation I thought with ror.
I did not want to lose my discipline so I played conservative with card counting, and actually did well, I suppose according to your simulations by luck, I was an outlier I suppose.
now I play funny money invite only tourneys where I can't lose anything of my own money. I have only played a few of these so far and have not gone to final table yet. they use multi decks I think 6 or 8 with csm so there is no card counting, thus I be minimum until last of the 30 hands when I deviate with rare exceptions. if someone breaks out early I will bet larger or parlay. I am glad these are funny money tourneys. I see a lot of wild plays and I really am not convinced that the players really know what they are doing, I could be wrong however.

[Three]

I played in a very lucrative tournament. The guys at my table were very aggressive so when I had position the correct bet was small. Everyone was betting big and one guy was doing lots of crazy plays early. The count was really negative so doubling a stiff might not be the worst move out there. I thought he knew a lot about tournament play and when I went out on the 22 hand of 25 I took all but 2 people with me. There was no max bet in this tourney. You could bet it all anytime. The 2 guys left were really stymied for strategy on the last hand and the leader going in, the guy that had done all the crazy plays early, lost to a swing on the last hand. When it came down to the most important hand he didn't know the right strategy or play. He gave the tournament away to the guy chasing him. He could have bet so he couldn't lose without losing the hand. He was in position to play after the other guy. He stayed on a stiff when the other guy had a strong made hand after betting all his chips. He played for a dealer bust The TC was -12!!! I think he had hard 13 against a dealer 3. Counter strategy was to hit and since a dealer bust was really unlikely he should have hit. The dealer made a hand causing him to lose. I know I have argued against counting but the correct strategy was easy to see without counting. He had a much better chance by taking a card. The only way he could win was a dealer bust or 21 and that is not very likely.

My point is the guy looked like he knew what he was doing but really didn't when crunch time came. His bet was wrong and his play was at least suspect. I know with so many face cards already burned I would not have played for a dealer bust at the casino and certainly not in the tournament.

[Gronbog]

I did not want to lose my discipline so I played conservative with card counting, and actually did well, I suppose according to your simulations by luck, I was an outlier I suppose.

It's hard to say. My simulations have all been of funny money tournaments where the other players (bots) are not afraid to make whatever bets are called for by their strategies. As I said earlier, in a live money event, perhaps folks would play differently and probably more conservatively. There may have been many others who used counting so that using counting yourself might have had the effect of keeping you within range of the pack. If I could get complete and exact details of one of these tournaments, I could run a simulation to find out which early/mid round strategies perfrom best under these conditions.

now I play funny money invite only tourneys where I can't lose anything of my own money. I have only played a few of these so far and have not gone to final table yet. they use multi decks I think 6 or 8 with csm so there is no card counting, thus I be minimum until last of the 30 hands when I deviate with rare exceptions. if someone breaks out early I will bet larger or parlay. I am glad these are funny money tourneys. I see a lot of wild plays and I really am not convinced that the players really know what they are doing, I could be wrong however.

There are certainly a lot of tournament ploppies out there who make crazy plays because they've been told "that's what you do in a tournament". They have no idea the the correct deviations have a purpose. There are many more who save the crazy plays until the end, but still don't understand the purpose. In my experience only a small percentage understand the true purpose of these plays.

[muffdiver]

Something that needs to be clarified is that "entry fees" and "buy-ins" are not always the same thing. In live money events the so called "buy in" is your starting BR which is the live money chips that you purchase before play commences.
I think the last live money event I played in was at the Stardust. Total purse was 175k (real money) with 100k going to the winner, 30k to second place, 18k third place, and on down. Original "entry fee" was $375 ($350 early bird) and then you bought $600 in live chips before playing. So, you see there was both an entry fee AND a buy in. You had either $975 or $950 invested before starting play. Minimum bet was $5 and max was $300.
So many APs played in their events that ending BRs of 2-3k were quite common and probably caused the change to funny money.
Apparently, mhb played at the Frontier in a different era than I did but what I remember there was $5 and $100 min and max bets (also live money). The original entry fee and the buy in might have been $100 each but I may be corrected on the last two figures.
Bottom line is that since everything now is funny money, there is no buy in unless you choose to call an entry fee a buy in. And as mentioned by others, there is sometimes no entry fee.
There are always other twists to tourney costs. For example, the Orleans now has invitationals with no original entry fee but if you don't advance you can pay $150 each for one or more re entries.
At Ken Smith's BJT site there used to be a poster (toolman1, I think) that came up with what he called a SV (seat value) which was determined by three things. They were tourney cost, amount of entrants and the purse. It's a nice idea for people that play in a lot of events.

[muffdiver]

mhb does bring up a good point about the difference between live money events and buy-in events for play chips. In the former, if you lose money, it's your own money and that would certainly make some folks play differently. Perhaps those of you who remember these events could enlighten us regarding how much money you had to put up for how much of a prize pool and other properties of these events.

Having never played one or even seen one, my first thought would be that you would have to estimate how much it would typically "cost" you to play the tournament properly and to factor that into the tournament EV. As well, there must surely be other factors which would affect the strategy of the end-game. Just off the top of my head, I would assume that you carry your chips from round to round, so you would have to be careful not to cripple yourself in trying to advance.

Perhaps this topic deserves its own thread.

None of the live events that I've played carried the chips forward. That meant that the Stardust event that I talked about in my last post required buying $600 of live chips for each playing session.
Also gron it's favor, not favour. Just kidding!!!

[Gronbog]

Also gron it's favor, not favour. Just kidding!!!

Ha! Not according to the my spell-checker, but that's probably because of the locale I have set in my browser. Just one more easy way to spot a Canuck or a Brit on the internet. We walk among you -- we're everywhere!

Interesting re: having to put up more live money for each round. Still, it makes making the right bet to advance easier to swallow.