150,000 OPEN BLACKJACK TOURNAMENT - Harrah's Atlantic City

Reservations for round one required by calling the
tournament info line 609-441-5741.  Must pay cash at
registration.  Phone ahead if you want specific time for
first round, but walkups were taken.  About 1/4 of
participants were walk up players.

Play begins on Friday at 6 pm.  Round two is 10 am Saturday
with the championship round at 2:30 pm.

Rounds are 25 hands.

Note that $150K is based upon 500 players.  For Dec 2005
event turnout was about 400 players so prize pool was about
$120K.

There are actually three rounds plus final table.  First
round 3 advance, second and semifinals only one advances
from table.

Min bet is $100, bets in $100 increments, no max.  Lots of
players would go all in on final hand so if you played for
the low and the dealer cooperated you could win on final
hand with everyone busting out.

Best not to play very first time in first round.  Pick a
later round.  Tables would be less full in later rounds and
dealers are inexperienced in dealing tournaments, but by
later times they were making less mistakes.

Dealing from six deck shoe with 90% penetration.  No counts
during play.  No time limit given, but dealer and players
are not used to betting in order, so often the dealer would
just say "place your bets" and everyone would tend to push
bets out immediately.  The rules state that you have to keep
your chips visible, but it didn't stipulate stacking
separately by denomination.

8TH THRU 14TH $1500.00  PRIZE POOL OF 150,000 IS BASED ON
500 ENTRIES.  TOTAL POOL WILL DEPEND ON NUMBER OF ENTRIES.

December 2005 about 400 entries, so prize pool was about $120K.

Guarantee of $50K prize pool.