2:1 Blackjack Payoff

[acercher]

The weekly tournament I play in is a hybrid format: 10-12 rounds of 15 hands with high scores placed on a leader board; the highest 7 scores (usually you need to win about 5 times your original bankroll) play in a money round with first place getting 50% of the buy-ins, 2nd gets 30%, 3rd 20%. Six decks with very high penetration, dealer hits soft 17, no surrender, blackjack pays 2:1.

I know the consensus on this board is that card counting doesn't make much sense in a tournament. In an earlier post I described why I think the unusual payoff could alter one's thinking about taking insurance. My question for the group is whether the 2:1 payoff should cause any other alteration in either playing strategy or betting? Even though the higher payoffs should result in higher variability among the bankrolls at the table, my intuition is that this shouldn't affect how you play the game. However, my intuition and mathematics aren't very good friends....

Your thoughts?

 

[gronbog]

2:1 blackjack will normally have no effect on your playing strategy. You either have a blackjack and get paid, or your don't. The only possible exception I can see would be if a 2 card 21 on a split hand was also paid 2:1. Even then, it would have minimal impact, since you are probably already splitting Aces frequently and you would still only split tens when forced to during the end game.

For accumulation rounds, the optimal strategy is to bet max until you either reach your goal or bust out. The 2:1 blackjack will help you to reach your goal, but once again, even if 2 card 21's are paid 2:1 on split hands, I don't think I would alter my strategy for the same reasons as I described above.

For table-advance rounds, 2:1 blackjacks make things easier for you, because you don't need to do any calculations associated with a 3:2 result. Be careful though. An opponent can triple his bank or his bet if he catches one!

 

[The_Professional]

One minor comment about insurance. I was recently in a BJ tournament in which BJ paid 2:1. Several times throughout the tournament, players asked for even money when they got BJ and dealer showed an ace. I felt a little guilty not alerting them to the mistake. Whenever BJ pays 2:1, you should not accept even money but rather pay insurance. The decisions to take insurance or not should not be affected by the 2:1 payout though.

 

[Monkeysystem]

The weekly tournament I play in is a hybrid format: 10-12 rounds of 15 hands with high scores placed on a leader board; the highest 7 scores (usually you need to win about 5 times your original bankroll) play in a money round with first place getting 50% of the buy-ins, 2nd gets 30%, 3rd 20%. Six decks with very high penetration, dealer hits soft 17, no surrender, blackjack pays 2:1.

I know the consensus on this board is that card counting doesn't make much sense in a tournament. In an earlier post I described why I think the unusual payoff could alter one's thinking about taking insurance. My question for the group is whether the 2:1 payoff should cause any other alteration in either playing strategy or betting? Even though the higher payoffs should result in higher variability among the bankrolls at the table, my intuition is that this shouldn't affect how you play the game. However, my intuition and mathematics aren't very good friends....

Your thoughts?

An argument can be made for changing your betting strategy in the early to middle hands of a round when blackjacks pay 2:1 as opposed to 3:2. The players have an advantage over the dealer. That speaks in favor of actually being one of the more aggressive bettors on the table.

There is, however, the offsetting factor that there is a limit to how many chips you can lose but no limit to how many you can win. You still lose more hands than you win. If in a short round of, say, 15 hands you don't get a blackjack, you are probably further behind your opponent than if you had bet the minimum. There are other factors that affect this decision of how to bet in the early and middle hands so you have to consider it carefully.

If I were to decide to bet aggressively because of 2:1 blackjacks, I would probably count cards. If the true count in the high-low system goes negative I would throttle back the betting.

Factors that support aggressive betting in early to middle hands when blackjacks pay 2:1 :
- One advance from table
- Starting bankroll 3 or more max bets
- Round longer than 30 hands

How aggressive is aggressive?
I probably wouldn't bet more than about one-fifth of my bankroll. Otherwise you should be betting bigger than the chip leaders. When you become a chip leader yourself, bet about average of the most threatening bankrolls. If you take a lead substantially bigger than the threatening bankrolls' bets, throttle it back even more. Let them take the risks to catch you, instead of you.