Cinco de Mayo $50,000 Spanish 21 Tournament - Great Blue Heron Charity - Port Perry, ON - Canada

I have been in many where they aggressively knocked them selves out with a heavy bet in that last hand and in truth I hoped they would. ;-)

It was a 50/50 as to which way it could go.

 

I don't know what the win rate is in Spanish 21, but in BJ it is about 44%. So when you have a lot of people shoving it all in at the end. It creates large chips totals with the 5% BJs and the people who double their money. If you don't have that disposition at the end of a round, you are in trouble.

I don't go play in those tournaments anymore, because of this. I was just not aggressive enough to accumulate the necessary chips to basically coast through the semis to get to the finals.

 

I agree with Larry's assessment of the evolution of the cutoff. There have only been 2 previous events with accumulation rounds at this casino: 1 blackjack and 1 baccarat. Folks are still learning. I made my estimates based on the assumption that the "big" betters would be averaging 1000 per hand, which is what I had observed previously and which, for the most part, I continued to observe.

 

The idea of the heavy bet at the end is that if you don't have enough to make it already, then you might as well bet it all. You get the benefit of the extra cushion if successful and you lose nothing if you fail. If you figure you already have enough, then you should be betting minimum.

 

For this game (S17):

• Playing The Wizard's strategy: Win: 43.15%, Lose: 48.52%, Push: 8.32%
  
• Playing normal BJ basic strategy: Win: 42.00%, Lose: 50.29%, Push: 7.71%
  
• Rate of blackjacks is 4.20%

 

In regular play of Spanish 21 you get paid the Super Bonus and the 777 bonus that your hand would get against any dealer upcard. I am not sure how the tournament would do it. At bets of over several hundred splitting is the right play in the casino play. Of course tournament play would not necessarily follow this as optimal. You will have about a 1 in 55 or 64 chance to hit it give or take.

 

Interesting. This is something that was not clear to me from in my spanish 21 reading (mainly the wizard of odds). I will have to correct this in my sp21 software model. Thanks!

 

Grinning, is this a tournament you have to have a card for in advance? Or, can you sign up in advance W/O one?

 

I meant to say Gronbog, not grinning lol now I'm grinning.

 

You do need a card to sign up and I'm not sure whether they will sign you up over the phone at all. You can sign up online, but then you definitely need to have a card already.

But not to worry, there are always seats available for the upcoming sessions, although they do eventually fill up. It's pretty easy to get a few cracks at it both on Friday and on Saturday. I'll be there for the 5pm session on Friday, which will give me chances to rebuy at 7pm and 9pm, if necessary. If I don't make it through on Friday, then that will be it for me, since I can't make it on Saturday.

Here's hoping that Grinning doesn't stick as a nickname