Major AC Invitational BJ Tournament

K

kelly_c_ritter

Member
I don't have details on this, yet, but the gist seems to be that the four Harrah's properties in AC are combining efforts for a blackjack tournament, August 18-20. Each of the four properties (Park Place, Caesars, Showboat, and Harrah's) will be holding preliminary rounds at their property with prize money to the winners who also qualify for the overall finals at Caesar's AC
on 8/20. I'm hearing numbers bandied about like $400k in total prize money ($250k for the overall finals with the rest for the individual property prizes). The impression that I have is that this is a purely invitational event. I may have better information on this later today, but if not, I'm not sure I'll be in a position to provide more info. I leave tomorrow for a Nevada trip that culminates in the millionaire maker bj tournament at Caesars, which conveniently enough gets me back to the East Coast in time for the AC tournament.
 
Some Further Details

Each of the four property prize funds is $50k to top 15 players (12,10,5, 4.5, 4,3,3,3,1,1,1,1,.5,.5,.5). It sounds like the property tournaments are accumulation style where you play either Friday night or Saturday, (or both),
and only your best score counts. The top 70 players from a property make it to the property finals Saturday evening which further reduces the field to 15
(don't know for sure if this reduction is table advance or accumulation, but it is probably accumulation.) Somehow on Sunday, they use two rounds to reduce the 60 property winners to 7 overall finalists at the final table with total prize money of $250k (150, 50, 25, 10, 8, 6, 1).
 
Don't have further details

I don't have further details other than that I was approved for the tournament. My guess would be that you'd have to already be established
at some Harrah's property sufficiently well so that you have a host there. I'd then try talking to that host about the possibility of being allowed to participate in the tournament. I presume that each of the four AC properties is running their own preliminary tournament, but I don't even know who the tournament director might be. I also have no idea what their admission standards might be. I'm sure it helped that I have seven stars status.
 
Tournament Format

Each of the four Harrah's AC properties ran their own accumulation style tournament on Friday/Saturday. You could play either Friday night or Saturday with your best score counting. The goal was to be in the top 70. There were no scheduled round times. You showed up, registered, and as soon as a table had a reasonable number of players, you played. In the first round, you played 15 hands, starting with $10k in chips, with $100 min, $5k max. Estimated number of players was hard to come by. At Harrah's, they were estimating 500 players per day, at Park Place 400, and at Showboat 200. I heard nothing about Caesar's. Nothing was posted regarding scores after Friday night's playing. At Park Place, it took 26050 to be in the top 70.
At Showboat, the cutoff was under 20000. I don't know what it was at the other two properties. The top 70 then played another accumulation round Saturday night with the top 16 (top 15 at Caesars) advancing to the Sunday finals, and receiving prize money. Since $250k was at stake for the 63 finalists on Sunday, what was really important was to make the finals as opposed to fighting over the $50k in prize money that was available at each property.

On Sunday, they divided the 63 players into 9 tables of 7 with 2 from each table advancing to the next round. In the second round, they took the top 2 from each 6 player table, and one wild card from the other 12 semifinalists
to form the finals, which is where all of the $250k went ($150k first).

All in all, a pretty juicy tournament, but one seemingly fraught with glitches. At Park Place, only 56 players of the 70 who qualified actually showed up for the finals. That seemed odd, but a similar pattern was also observed at the Showboat. I don't know if players were just confused about when the property finals were, or thought their scores weren't high enough. I also saw a big argument between a player who insisted he should have been in the property finals, but there apparently was a lost manifest, so his qualifying result wasn't recorded. At the property finals at Park Place, the lowest advancing score was 41000
(property finals started with 20k in chips, bet range 500-10000). When I left, a lady was complaining that she too had a score of exactly 41000, but her name hadn't been called as a qualifier for Sunday.

The other wrinkle in the finals was a secret bet for the last hand, which was revealed before the hands were played. Interestingly enough, the hands were played in the usual 1st base - 3rd base order without rotation, independent of the betting order. I had the feeling that this tournament was thrown together at the very last moment. The rules for the final round were not even made available to the players until they showed up to register on Sunday.
 
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