I'm interested in talking Blackjack Tournament STRATEGY here with another interested parties. It seems this site is primarily counters though I thought I'd check!
I used to play in a couple local tournaments when I first started playing (pre-counting/ploppy days) because I thought they were cheap entertainment and you got to play a lot of hands for little cost (one tournament had no entry fee and the other had a $60 buy in). When I first started counting I liked to play in them because I thought of it as cheap practice in a casino environment. I did fairly well and on an annual basis won more than my buy ins, so I thought it was worth it.
I have not played in a tournament in a while, but I always enjoyed the crazy plays you would see when someone was playing catch up or you were in the final round of hands. I will never forget playing the last round with 5 players left on a semi-final table (you needed to win the table to advance to the final) and the first 4 players drew 21s; I had the largest stack so I was feeling pretty good. The last player had a 20, but knew his stack was not going to be enough to win, so he DD, drew an A and moved on to the final table...where he finished 1st! What a night for that guy, his buy in was $60 and he brought home about $3700! Even though he beat me out of the final table, I was very happy for him.
If it was A,9, then doubling was the right move. I hope it wasn't T,T. In that case the correct play would clearly have been to split. There are no other 2 card 20s.
I once correctly and successful doubled on a hard 19.
Last edited by Gronbog; 02-15-2020 at 08:37 PM.
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