Blackjack Tournaments

Blackjack is chiefly known as a casino game where you bet against the house, and where the fortunes and misfortunes of fellow players is of no consequence. During recent years however, more and more casinos, online as well as offline, have started to arrange blackjack tournaments where you compete against other players and can win extra prices – in addition to what you win on the table.

A blackjack tournament will typically consist of several elimination rounds, but online you can also find blackjack tournaments that takes place during a longer period of time – sometimes up to a week –
and where your end result is what counts. Land casinos are fond of black jack tournaments with elimination rounds since a player that has proceeded from round one to round two is likely to stay in the casino and wait, even if round two wont take place until four hours later. And in the mean time, the player is likely to pass time playing other games, e.g. ordinary blackjack, roulette and slot machines.

In a blackjack tournament with elimination rounds, it is usually the one or two finishers on each participating table that will advance to the next round. Each player start with the same amount of chips, and a round will typically consists of a predetermined number of hands, such as 20 or 30. Sometimes, a round will instead proceed a certain amount of minutes.

Blackjack tournaments online, especially the long ones that stretches out over several days, will often let you bring as much money to the table as you please and refill whenever necessary. This means that players with large bankrolls will have an advantage over players on a stricter budget. Sometimes the net profit of at the end of the tournament is what counts, sometimes the best 20 (or any other number) hands in a row. In this type of tournaments, it is naturally difficult – albeit not impossible – for someone playing at a $1 table to out-win someone playing at a $100 table.

During blackjack tournaments in land casinos, the dealer doesn’t always start dealing from chair number one. Instead, a button is normally used to designate who gets the first card. The button moves one step after each hand, just like the button at a poker table. This helps keep the competition more fair, since players who act last have more information than players that have to act first. When your last, you will for instance know how much your adversaries have bet and which cards they have received, and adjust your strategy accordingly. This is especially crucial during the last hand.