Mini Baccarat Tournament - Great Blue Heron, Port Perry, Ontario, Canada

Discussion in 'Baccarat Events' started by gronbog, Jan 21, 2013.

  1. gronbog

    gronbog Top Member

    Feb 15-16, 2013. $200 Entry fee. More details as I learn them.
     
  2. gronbog

    gronbog Top Member

    More Info

    Register online at: https://pokertickets.com/greatblue ($10 admin fee applies) or in person
    Official Rules available at the baccarat pit.

    Entry Fee $200 CDN

    Qualifying sessions:
    • Friday Feb 15, 2013 at 3pm and 7pm.
    • Saturday Feb 16, 2013 at 1pm and 5pm
    • Rebuys available as space permits.
    • Tables will be equally filled within each session. Max of 9 players per table.
    • 30 hands.
    • $5,000 bankroll, Player/Banker limits: $100-$5,000, Tie limits $25-$1,000
    • Final hand: No limits, Secret Bet
    • Number of advancers is dependent on the number of players at each table.
      • For 9 players: 3 advancers
      • For 6 players: 2 advancers
    Semi Final:
    • Sunday Feb 27, 2013
    • Number of sessions, tables and players per table, and number of advancers will be determined based on the number of qualifiers.
    • Same conditions and limits as in the preliminary sessions.
    Final Table:
    • Sunday Feb 27, 2013, 9pm
    • Maximum of 9 players
    • 30 hands.
    • $10,000 bankroll, Player/Banker limits: $200-$10,000, Tie limits $25-$2,000
    • Final 10 hands: No maximum, Secret bet
    Prizes:
    • 1st: $30,000 cash or a 2013 Chevy Trax
    • 2nd: $3,000
    • 3rd: $2,000
    • $10,000 will be split among the remaining finalists and all semi final participants. Max $1,000 each.
    • All prizes paid in Canadian Dollars and are tax free for Canadians (not sure about others).
    Rules:
    • Players must make either a Player or Banker bet on each hand (but not both)
    • No commission will be charged on Banker bets
    • Players may also bet on Tie
    • Winning tie bets pay 8:1
     
    Last edited: Jan 27, 2013
  3. gronbog

    gronbog Top Member

    Congrats!!

    I am happy to report that a member of this site (not me) made the final table of this event today! I am, however, embarrassed to say that I've forgotten what his handle here is. :eek:

    We ended up at the same semi final table and, forced to make an all-in bet near the end of the round, I was unsuccessful. However, our hero made his move several hands later and was not only successful in winning his bet, he won the table to advance to the final.

    Hopefully he will see this post and fill us all in on how he made out in the final.
     
  4. benfoo99

    benfoo99 Member

    No need to feel embarrassed and thanks for your concern!

    I made it to win the first prize $30,000. It was a tight game throughout the Final Round. All players survived to play the last hand. Actually everyone still has a chance to win on the last one but luck was on my side. Very lucky day for me.
     
  5. gronbog

    gronbog Top Member

    Congratulations!!! A nice payday for an even nicer guy :1st:
     
  6. KenSmith

    KenSmith Administrator Staff Member

    Congrats! Nice win!
     
  7. benfoo99

    benfoo99 Member

    Thank you all!
     
  8. gronbog

    gronbog Top Member

    I'm a bit torn about posting this. On the one hand, two members of this site made the final table of the latest event this past weekend, which is great news. On the other hand, one of them was me and I don't want to be seen as blowing my own horn excessively. Be that as it may, I know that the other member is too humble to post about it, and no one else was there, that I know of, so I'll do it. :cool:

    I am happy to report that benfoo99 (who also won this event 2 years ago -- see above) and I both made the final table this time around. I was fortunate enough to place 2nd and Ben finished 4th. As always the event was well run. They have only been hosting tournaments for a couple of years, but they are really starting to understand what makes a tournament good, fair and fun for the players.

    I'll mitigate the announcement of my own success by adding another entry into my series of posts that I like to call "Learn from Gronbog's Mistakes". That should help to keep everyone's perception of me in line with reality. I'm starting to think that I could consolidate them in a single thread for easy reference. o_O

    Although I finished second, had it not been for an unbelievable mistake on my part on the final hand, I would have finished first. Usually my errors are due to flaky arithmetic or an incorrect count of an opponent's chips, or just plain misunderstanding the situation. That was not the case this time. If fact, in this case I had an accurate count of everyone's chips written down on paper. This is very common in baccarat events because they give you a pen and a card to use for tracking the results of the previous hands if you want to. You can usually use these to write down anything you want to. Not only that, but I was BR1 going into the secret bet on the final hand and I calculated the perfect bet to win the tournament by winning my main bet or a tie bet given that everyone was within striking distance in one way or another. I did this by calculating how much I would need to finish first by winning my main bet and then splitting the rest of my chips between my main bet and a tie bet, while holding back a chip because it is very common for everyone to go all-in on the final hand of a baccarat tournament. Given that I had a pen and paper, I was able to do all of this with great precision. I was quite proud of myself! In addition, I knew, with a high degree of confidence that most, if not all, at the table would be betting on Bank and/or Tie. So I also bet on Bank and Tie.

    So what went wrong? Inexplicably, despite having all of the scores written down, I misidentified the score for BR2 and instead made my calculations based on the score belonging to BR3. Once all the bets were down, BR2 looked at me with a puzzled look on his face. He had also bet bank and he said to me that he would be the winner if Bank won the hand. I thought to myself, "I don't think so! --- and then -- Oh no --- did you screw up that calculation somehow". I reviewed my written work and found no error, yet when Bank did win the hand and the payouts were made, there I was in second place. It was only then that I realized that I had overlooked BR2's score and used BR3's score which had allowed BR2 to overtake me by going all-in.

    I can tell you that losing 20k on such a stupid mistake is a horrible feeling. Very bitter-sweet, because 10k is still a very nice payday and I am grateful for having been able to win it. Just another lesson that there are many mistakes to be made and that it is likely that, over time, I will make all of them. :rolleyes:
     
  9. KenSmith

    KenSmith Administrator Staff Member

    I too made one of my worst errors ever in an event at where I was able to write down the bankrolls. It was in the Bahamas, a blackjack event, but they allowed pencil and paper. That's the only time I have ever seen that allowed.

    On the final hand, with 3 out 4 players advancing and me in good shape, I made a bet so large that losing it put me in last place. I don't remember how I achieved that, but it was pretty dumb.

    For me, the distraction of paper was too much!
     
  10. gronbog

    gronbog Top Member

    Thanks Ken. It's reassuring to know that even the best among us has made the odd bone-headed decision. I think your comment about the pen and paper has some validity. It's something outside of the normal process we typically use in these situations. Had there been no pen and paper, I would have carefully counted everyone's chips and would probably have identified BR2's total. On paper it was just one of 7 other numbers written down, all in blue ink, and it failed to catch my eye.
     
  11. The_Professional

    The_Professional Active Member

    Congratulation Gronbog and sorry for the 20K oversight. I would like to clarify your comment above. You calculated how much you need to make as a main bet and then splitting the rest between main bet and tie. Why do you need to bet these extra chips and did you bet them on banker too? I do not play much baccarat tournaments, so excuse my ignorance.
     
  12. gronbog

    gronbog Top Member

    In baccarat, unlike blackjack, taking the low is rarely the best option if you are leading on the final hand. This is because the most likely outcomes are a Banker Win (45.86%), followed closely by a player win (44.62%), with the odds of a tie being 9.52%. So when you are ahead, and you don't get to see your opponents' bets and there are several opponents within striking distance, then your best chance of prevailing is to bet to win a Banker bet. That's what I refer to as my main bet above. However, Tie usually pays 8 to 1, so an opponent can beat you with a relatively small bet on Tie. Fortunately, you can cover this possibility by also making a small bet on Tie. If you can also afford to make a tie bet, such that you will also prevail if Tie wins, then you are now the favourite with a 55.36% chance of success.

    Now, the size of the main bet is easy to calculate, since it pays even money. All you need to know is how much you need to win to cover the high if an opponent were also to bet on bank. If an opponent bets on Player, they will bet enough to swing your minimum bet, so if Player wins, it doesn't matter how much you bet on Bank.

    I had a high degree of confidence, that everyone would be all-in (and I was right), so I wanted to hold back a chip and to bet as much as I could on Tie in order to cover as many tie bets as I could. The key to adding a tie bet is to realize that the Tie bet loses if Banker or Player wins, but a Banker/Player bet pushes if Tie wins. So in order to preserve the high with my Banker bet, I had to add to it the amount that I bet on Tie. This means that I could only bet half of my remaining chips on Tie, while adding that same amount to my Banker bet.

    Here are the actual numbers from my ill-fated bet. I thought that BR2 had 19,200. I had 20,500. So I wanted to cover 2x19,200=38,400 high with a Banker bet. This required a bet of 18,000 (100 unit). This left me with 2,500 in chips. I could only bet 1,200 on Tie since I needed to also add 1,200 to my Banker bet in order to preserve the high and hold back a 100 chip. So my final bet was 19,200 Banker and 1,200 Tie. Notice that my banker bet ended up being 19,200 which is the same as the score that I thought was BR2. This is not a coincidence when going all-in on Banker/Player+Tie vs a given opponent score and represents a short cut for calculating the required main bet.

    It turned out that BR2's actual score was 20,000 and that he bet it all on Banker. So when Banker won, he ended up with 40,000 and I ended up with 38,500. Had I realized that 20,000 was the BR2 score, I would have bet 20,000 on Banker and 400 on Tie.
     
    Last edited: Feb 25, 2015
    KenSmith and The_Professional like this.
  13. The_Professional

    The_Professional Active Member

    Nicely explained. Thanks.
     
  14. rookie789

    rookie789 Active Member

    The Las Vegas Tropicana has a chip count with 5 hands left and at that time actually hand each player a piece of paper and pen to track each players BR.
     
    KenSmith likes this.
  15. The_Professional

    The_Professional Active Member

    Rookie789
    Do you play in the Tropicana tournament. I am having hard time figuring out if it is invitational or not. I called and different people gave me different answers. If you played there, can you tell us more about them.
     
  16. rookie789

    rookie789 Active Member

    I don't play their 100K tournaments as they have too many Funky ways to tap your bank account for hundreds of $$$ to remain competative in each round plus it's one advance each round, I presume to sell rebuys which are offered in multiple rounds, you could very easily be in a minus EV situation purchasing $100 Mulligans (discard & replace the last card dealt), $100 chip add-on ($8,000 additional chips after hand 8) and rebuys. You can also buy into the semis without playing earlier rounds for $1,000 (limit 10) first come first served.

    Two wild cards are drawn for the finals but earning wild card tickets require a casino table dealt natural BJ with a $100 minimum bet, wining single number Roulette $50 minimum bet etc.

    The next Tropicana 100K BJ tournament is April 24-26 which I've not posted on the event calendar as I don't post tournaments I wouldn't participate. Anyone still interested can PM me for additional info.

    To answer your question; The tournament entry is hybrid, invitational or $499 paid entry, both include 3 nights lodging.
     
    Last edited: Feb 25, 2015
  17. The_Professional

    The_Professional Active Member

    Thanks rookie789, I think it would be very helpful if you could post Tropicana events since I could not find any other source for such information on Tropicana website and when I called it was hard to find someone who knew what I was asking about. I am sure it would be appreciated by many.
     
    Last edited: Feb 25, 2015
  18. rookie789

    rookie789 Active Member

    The Tropicana 100K tournament is now posted in the Event Calendar containing all information I possess. I timely posted their December 2014 30K and February 2015 30K tournaments as I considered them + or neutral EV playable tournaments, I consider their 100K tournaments biased to favor (reward) their casino big $$ players.

    My Event Calendar post for this tournament includes the phone number 800-545-4989 which you can call for additional information, I suggest you request an emailed tournament fact sheet for evaluation of potential attendence.
     
    KenSmith and The_Professional like this.
  19. The_Professional

    The_Professional Active Member

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