The more that I learn about blackjack tournaments, the more that I see familiarities with not just poker tournaments but also with how poker is played full stop. Playing blackjack tournaments has nothing to do with card counting although counting cards can and does have its uses.
Card counting can help you in blackjack tournaments as it can help you to identify players who are using card counting as a basis to form their betting decisions. Blackjack tournaments are won by strategy and betting and not by card counting. The tournament is basically played as a series of elimination rounds where all of the players either still beat or lose to the dealer.
But just as in poker, their is a dealer button that moves around the table and this means that all players take it in turns to have position. Just like in poker tournaments, a player who is losing or behind the chip leaders needs to catch up at some stage and they cannot always do this by getting big hands. So they need to create fluctuation by betting big during some very marginal and even -EV situations.
This then increases the variance and allows the player who is behind a better chance to catch up. With blackjack elimination rounds being only a small number of hands (often 30) then each player only has a small amount of time before they are eliminated from the tournament.
So it is clear now that to make up lost ground when time is running out in terms of hands left to be dealt that players must gamble to get back into contention. I will be placing more articles on blackjack tournaments, how they work and strategies to do well in the them in the coming posts.
