Tournaments
Annual full-fledged blackjack tournaments that involve a thousand or more players competing for prizes of $50,000 and up are not uncommon in Las Vegas. More popular, however, are the numerous mini-tournaments that are held daily. Practically every large casino now hosts these scaled-down attractions, which appeal to novice blackjack players and seasoned veterans alike. A typical buy-in of $25 can put anyone in contention for a $500 first prize and perhaps one of three $100 consolation prizes.
Mini-tournaments are generally run as follows. Each registered player receives $1,000 worth of “tournament” chips and can wager from $10 to $1,000 per hand. All the usual blackjack rules apply, except that a button is passed around the table clockwise in order to indicate where the dealer starts dealing each hand. Unlike real blackjack, however, players compete against each other to determine a table winner after a set period of time, normally half an hour. After time expires, three final hands are dealt to all remaining players at the table who still have chips to wager. Once these hands are resolved, the player who has accumulated the most value in tournament chips wins the round and then proceeds to the next table, where he receives a fresh stack of $1,000 chips to play against five or six other table winners. It usually takes three such rounds to establish an overall champion, with all players who reach the final table winning at least their entry fees back.
While blackjack tournaments and mini-tournaments are obviously great fun, the main problem is that chance rather than skill usually determines who ends up with the prize money. Second, while the odds of winning are certainly better than with, say, keno, the potential return on your entry fee is not great. Professional players know that winning blackjack is a slow process; in just a couple of hours anything can happen and normally does. This is not enough time to differentiate a knowledgeable player from a merely lucky one. While counters do have an obvious advantage over beginning players, who wins a table (or tournament) is almost always decided upon the last hand (or two) dealt, proper blackjack playing strategy being tossed out the window. Wagering assumes an unnatural significance. Since it is necessary to win more than all other opponents, tournament players are forced to make ridiculous plays such as doubling down on pat hands or even blackjacks.
“Rapid blackjack,” a variation of tournament blackjack, is simply a shortened mini-tournament, usually lasting only one shoe plus three hands.
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