The first such tournaments were run by Ed and David Fishman at the Sahara hotel in Las Vegas, beginning in late 1978, under the name 'The World's First Blackjack Tournaments Championship'. Donald Catlin reports that there was a $250 entry fee and buy-in was $500, players using their own money to buy chips. FWIW I wonder if Venetian will have blackjack's pay 6:5 in the blackjack tournament - because that is the rule for all their tables under $50 limits. HuskerBB, Mar 11, 2019 #8.
Blackjack is one of the funnest and most exciting games you can play at the casino. It’s also one of the best games to play, because if you play perfect strategy, the casino’s edge is very, very small. That’s why it is so important to learn how to play perfect Blackjack strategy.
Our Blackjack Trainer will do that.
Follow our directions below to fully benefit from the best free Blackjack training tool on the Net!
To get started, you must set up the rules of the game to match the type of game you want to practice and plan on playing.
Blackjack rules differ among different casinos. So, for example, if you plan on playing Blackjack at the Venetian Casino in Las Vegas, you should find out the rules of the various blackjack games offered there and practice that particular game.
I play the Blackjack game at the Venetian, which offers Surrender and pays 3:2 on Blackjack. I’ll set up the table rules appropriately under the CHART CHOICES and OTHER CHOICES.
If you are brand new to playing Blackjack, we recommend setting the mode to Random. The Random setting does exactly that, deals you random cards as you would get dealt in a real game.
If you are an experienced Blackjack player, we recommend setting this to Hard mode. Hard mode skews the hands to present you more difficult decisions.
Select one of the other settings if you want to practice those specific types of hands.
See the screenshot to the right.
Once you have your choices set, click on the yellow Start button to begin playing.
You will be dealt cards and can now play Blackjack.
There is a strategy chart on the right side which you can use to determine what play you should make. To understand this chart, the first column represents your hand, while the Dealer’s card is represented across the top row.
In this example hand, I am dealt a 2 and an Ace. The dealer has a 7. To read this chart, I locate the A2 in the first column, and the Dealer’s 7 on the top row. The chart tells me to H – which means Hit.
See the screenshot below. Reading the Blackjack Strategy Chart on the right, I’ve located my ideal move, circled in black. I then click the appropriate action, circled in red.
Over time, you should not consult the chart at all. The goal is to memorize the best moves in every situation.
You are given $1,000 to play with and each bet is $10. However, the goal of this trainer is not to win money, but to play perfect Blackjack strategy.
So although your bankroll is tracked, the more important statistic is your percentage of correct moves. As you learn and memorize the best moves to make, your goal should be a score of 100%. Anything less than 100% is giving the casino an edge and reducing your chances of winning.
The number in the green box is the number of correct moves. The number in the red box are bad moves.
That’s it, the rest of the trainer is pretty simple and self-explanatory. It’s always the most fun to play Blackjack live at the casino, but there are some decent online Blackjack options available if you are interested. We recommend checking out the BetOnline Casino which offers a Live Dealer Blackjack game and a Blackjack compatible welcome bonus. Learn more below.
BetOnline Casino
Why should I play Blackjack at the BetOnline Casino? Because BetOnline offers a lot of Blackjack games and specific Blackjack promotions. It’s an excellent online casino to play Blackjack. And for a limited time, you can bet up to $100 RISK FREE at the American Blackjack game!
First time casino players can bet up to $100 RISK-FREE on American Blackjack!
If you lose, you will be refunded the amount as a Casino Bonus with a 40x rollover requirement.
You cannot use bonus funds to place your first Blackjack bet.
Alternatively, receive a 100% deposit bonus of up to $1,000, and you can play your bonus money on Blackjack!
BetOnline Casino offers Live Blackjack with real live dealers, Live Blackjack Leaderboards for extra prize money, and Blackjack Tournaments every month.
BetOnline accepts players from the USA.
…and so much more!
Play Blackjack at the BetOnline Casino!
Get your $100 risk-free bet or a 100% deposit bonus up to $1,000!
Optimal blackjack strategy depends on the house rules of that particular game and the number of decks. We recommend visiting Blackjack-Chart.com for the best blackjack charts.
If you like roulette, there are ways to win at the game! Check out roulette strategy at RouletteBettingSystem.org.
Try playing blackjack online with a live dealer! The BetOnline Live Casino accepts USA players. Learn more about live blackjack at https://livedealersites.com.
We also recommend checking out the new Ignition Casino that launched in 2016. You can find the latest Ignition Casino bonus codes at https://usacasinobonuscode.com/ignition-casino-bonus-code/
For more reviews of USA online betting sites, visit BettingSitesUSA.
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Current Online Blackjack Tournaments
Online casino tournaments data supplied by CasinoListings.com.
About Blackjack Tournaments
In the last decade, poker has gone through a tremendous boom thanks to the rising popularity of poker tournaments. In fact, for many people, high stakes tournaments might be the first thing they think of when they think of poker. On the other hand, blackjack is mostly known as a table game played in the casino, not a competitive endeavor where you compete against fellow players.
But blackjack has a tournament scene too, and it’s one that’s just as exciting and competitive as the world of tournament poker. In a blackjack tournament, the goal isn’t just to beat the dealer – though you probably will have to do that more than a few times to win. Instead, you’re competing against the other players at your table to see who can amass the most chips in a certain number of hands.
Typically, a blackjack tournament will consist of elimination rounds (though single table blackjack tournaments do exist), in which the top one or two finishers out of a table of about five to six players will advance to the next round. At the beginning of each round, each player starts with the same number of chips. Typically, a round will last somewhere between 20-30 hands, after which the players are ranked by the number of chips they hold.
Immediately when sitting down and playing in a blackjack tournament, you’ll notice that some things are different from your typical blackjack game. For instance, the dealer doesn’t always start dealing from the “first base” position (the player to the dealer’s left). Instead, the first position changes from hand to hand, with a button moving around the table, much like the dealer button in poker. This helps keep the competition on a more equal footing; players who act last are at a significant advantage, since they can see how much their opponents have bet, and see how their hands are doing before they need to make any decisions of their own. This is an especially critical advantage on the final hand.
Venetian Blackjack Tournament Rules Games
Blackjack Tournament Strategy
Not surprisingly, blackjack tournaments require very different strategies than when you’re just playing blackjack against the casino. Since your goal is to accumulate more chips than your opponents, it is sometimes wise to do things which you would never do when simply playing blackjack at a regular table.
One of the key strategic concepts in blackjack tournaments is that players will tend to have very similar results in terms of winning or losing hands. While it is far from a guarantee, hands where a few of the players win against the dealer and a few lose are less common than hands where the whole table beats a busted dealer, or the dealer defeats all (or nearly all) of the players. This means that when you gain chips, you can expect the other players to be generally gaining chips as well; and when the dealer is running over you, chances are that the other players at your table won’t be faring much better.
This concept led to the discovery that one very effective strategy in blackjack tournaments was simply to do the opposite of what the rest of the table was doing. For instance, if the rest of the table is making small, conservative wagers, this strategy suggests that you should make large wagers instead. This works because, in general, the players making bets of similar sizes will end up with a similar number of chips. Meanwhile, you – as the only player at the table trying something different – will likely find yourself with a very different amount of chips. This might put you in first place, or it might put you in last, depending on how the dealer treats you. But having a 50/50 shot at first at a table of five or six players is a pretty good deal.
These days, blackjack tournament strategy has evolved to the point where these easily exploitable tables are less common, which means more advanced strategy is required. Most good players will generally bet small, but look for some good spots to make larger bets, especially when they can act last and see what their opponents are doing first. When in the lead, players often switch to bets of moderate size (especially when acting early), so that their opponents can’t get the full benefit of playing in an “opposite” manner. As round progresses, it also becomes important to calculate just how much you’ll need to bet to get yourself into a position to advance, without risking so much that you won’t have later opportunities should you lose a given hand.
Blackjack tournament strategy eventually comes down to a balancing act: you must take enough risks to win, but only when the rewards are big enough to justify taking those risks. Advanced blackjack tournament strategy goes even further, taking steps to optimize bet sizing, pointing out when to ignore basic strategy because you need to take bigger risks (or need to play extra conservatively), and much more.
Major Blackjack Tournaments
In recent years, several blackjack events have gained considerable notoriety. Perhaps the most well-known to television audiences was the World Series of Blackjack, a competition televised on the Game Show Network. This mostly closed tournament does allow players to enter through satellites, and the top prize – which started at $100,000 in the show’s first season – rose to $500,000 over subsequent seasons, the last of which was aired in 2007. GSN also briefly aired a series known as the World Blackjack Tour, and UltimateBet ran the Ultimate Blackjack Tour for two seasons.
However, unlike with poker, most major blackjack tournaments are not televised. Still, blackjack tournaments are commonly held in major casinos around the world, often with large prize pools that can range into the hundreds of thousands of dollars or more. Blackjack tournaments are also spread regularly at many online casinos, meaning you can play in an exciting tournament from the convenience of your own home!
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Venetian Blackjack Tournament Rules 2019