When most folks hear “card tournament”, they automatically think about some kind of poker tournament, however for those who have never experienced a blackjack tournament, here are the basics.

Set-Up

Blackjack tournaments pit seven players against the dealer, with a required minimum and maximum bet per every hand. Players must play all hands.  If you run out of chips at any point of the tournament, you’re immediately out.

At the beginning of a hand, the first to be dealt determines what they choose to bet, so on and so forth until all players bets are on the table.  As in holdem’, the start of the deal rotates clockwise at every new hand.  At the end of twenty or twenty-five hands (at the discretion of the tournament director), the game ends, and the top one to three chip leaders advance to the next round (the number of advancing players per table are again, at the tournament director’s discretion).  The top players per every table are then chosen at random to their new table, with a new chip stack, equal to all players at the table, and the process begins again, until one table remains.

Standard rules of blackjack apply, including insurance, splits, double downs, and surrender/late surrender (the last two at the discretion of the house).

Strategy

Most standard blackjack strategy comes into play, when it comes to tournament, however, betting strategy changes.  Due to the nature of this tournament, there’s no way of getting out of a hand without any recourse.  In this case, it would be your initial bet.  Whether you bet high or low, use a progression or not, is only half of the game.  The other half would be protecting your position, in some cases, that would mean hitting on a twenty, even though it’s consider suicide, and/or not hitting on a ten.

This is when the psychological game comes into play.

The general consensus to non-tournament blackjack is for all players at a table to play accordingly to the standard procedures that ultimately benefit the table.  It’s an “us against them” mentality.  In tournament blackjack, on the other hand, it’s about getting ahead of your fellow players, to them be damned, and to extend your lead, however possible.   This occasionally means playing sacrificial hands.

Sacrificial hands are hands where you specifically bet low because you purposely plan on blowing the hand.  This is generally done when you’re ahead and your opponents begin to bet high in hopes of catch up, however, due to the nature of these sacrificed hands, they are not played to be won, but to purposely lose, essentially ruining the shoe, or putting fellow players on tilt, which happens often.

Although tournament blackjack is rare at charity events, it is an option for those who are trying to add something more than the usual texas holdem tournament to their event roster.  Although not mentioned in any of our partner’s websites (links available on the “about me” page, all the companies will accommodate you, if you wish to run this kind of event.