A One-On-One Finale

You've battled through an online blackjack tournament and the other players have dropped out, one by one. There are only a few hands left and you are heads-up with one opponent. You both have $1,500 in chips. How do you play it? It's time to maximize your heads up black jack tournament strategy.

One on one play at the end of a blackjack tournament is a bit of a dance, and you had better learn the proper steps if you want to come up on top the majority of the time. This is what tournament blackjack is all about -- the pulse-pounding finale as your shrewd bets and plays carry you to the finish.

Players tend to take turns trying to get the lead in these situations. They do this by betting more than their opponent when they are last to act. There's nothing that the player betting first can do about this other than by betting the max, hence the power of the positional advantage, which makes plays in a blackjack tournament very similar to what you see in tournament poker.

If the leader bets second, then blackjack tactics dictate he match the bet of the first and trailing player to likely maintain that lead. Of course, the leader then bets first on the next hand and has the positional disadvantage. This see-saw battle will often continue until the end of the blackjack tournament.

One standard play by a leader betting first is to "bet the gap." Let's say, for example, that you have $2,900 in chips and second place has $2,400. You bet $450. This will keep you in the lead if both players lose the hand and will force the player in second to bet large to take the lead. Your opponent can't take the low and bet $100 to pull ahead of you if you both lose the hand. Since the dealer wins most hands during a blackjack tournament you want to make a trailing player win the hand to take the lead.

Going into the final two hands in the tournament, position is obviously key factor in black jack tournament strategy. If you bet first on the final hand then you want to try to get the lead on the penultimate hand and your one-on-one opponent can't catch you. If you bet last on the final hand you must still make sure you are reasonably close to your opponent in chips after the penultimate hand, but it's less important to have the lead. For example, let's say that you have $1,500 in chips on the next to last hand and your opponent has $1,900, with max bets of $500. You don't want to make a small bet because your foe can pull away from you with a solid win here, preventing you from catching him on the last hand. Bet at least $400 to keep your opponent within striking distance, then depending on the chip counts on the final hand you can decide whether to take the high or low strategy based on his bet.