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THE ONE DECISION TOURNAMENT: Part 3
by Kenneth R Smith
Tournament expert Ken Smith has appeared on all four seasons of GSN's World Series of Blackjack, and had several appearances on the Ultimate Blackjack Tour on CBS. He is the author of the e-book.
How to Win More Blackjack Tournaments: Tips, Tricks, and Strategies to Supercharge Your Game. Ken hosts the popular website www.BlackjackInfo.com as well as the online tournament community at www.BlackjackTournaments.com. You can subscribe to his free email newsletter at http://www.blackjackinfo.com/news/. Ken also recently released his new pocket blackjack strategy cards, which are available in our BJI store.For the past two months I have been publishing results of a study of an unusual tournament format intended to focus strictly on the benefit of various bet sizes. This month I'll wrap up the research with the results of all the questions posed in the original article. First, let's recap the format and the questions.
The "One Decision Tournament" is a tournament round where players must choose a single bet amount for the entire round. They must flat-bet that amount, and they must play normal basic strategy for every hand.
The details:
- Rounds are 10 hands each, with betting in $5 increments from $5 to $500.
- Starting bankroll is $500.
- Six decks, S17, Double after split allowed, Split up to four hands except Aces which can be split only once and get one card on each. No surrender is allowed.
- If a player has less than his designated bet size left (but more than the table minimum), he must bet his entire bank subject to the $5 increment rule.
- If a player has too little left to double or split in full, he will play the hand without doubling or splitting.
- Ties will be broken with sudden death, playing rounds until we have a winner. If players tie with less than the table minimum left, they will be advanced $500 each for the tiebreaker.
The research questions:
- What should the first player choose as a bet size, without knowing what his opponents will choose behind him?
- Assume the six players chose $5, $50, $100, $200, $300, $500 as their respective bet sizes. Who has the best chance of winning the round?
- Assume the first five players all chose $100 as their bet size. What should the final player choose as his bet size to have the best chance?
- Assume that the first five players all chose to bet the minimum $5. Now what should player 6 choose?
All of these questions were to be answered under 5 different circumstances:
A) 10 hand rounds, 1 player advances, Blackjack pays 3:2
B) 10 hand rounds, 2 players advance, Blackjack pays 3:2
C) 10 hand rounds, 1 player advances, Blackjack pays 2:1
D) 10 hand rounds, 1 player advances, Blackjack pays 5:1
E) 100 hand rounds, 1 player advances, Blackjack pays 5:1
Question 1:
Against a random field of bettors, how do the various bet size choices perform under each group's circumstances?
A1: $5 @ 21.99%
B1: $5 @ 47.93% (large percentage due to two advancing)
C1: $5 @ 19.62%
D1: $245 @ 17.97%
E1: $55 @ 22.58%
We see that the minimum $5 bettor does best against random fields, even when blackjack pays 2:1. However, once we bias the game heavily in the player's favor by paying 5:1 on blackjack, the larger bettors come out on top. With 10 hands in D1, we bet nearly half a max bet to maximize our chances. In the longer 100 hand rounds of E1, a smaller bet increases the chances that we'll live to see the benefit of a few blackjacks.
You can see the particular impact in the graphs of all possible bet sizes...
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