Keeping track of all of the events of a blackjack tournament can be quite confusing at times, and most players could benefit from a few tips and some good advice. Consider that you must keep up with five to seven players, their bankrolls and the hands they are dealt. At least in online blackjack, their stack sizes are always there for you to see, a luxury live tournament blackjack players don't have.
But even with that benefit, there is still no handy calculator that will do the math for you as to the possible final results for each hand and how that will affect the stack sizes going into the next hand, and the hand after that and the hand after that
Given that many tournament blackjack matches are tightly-contested affairs, here's some simple advice if you're not sure what to do - throw out a big bet.
In most blackjack tournaments, you will have to make a big bet at some point to take the lead or win the match, so if you're in the middle of a tournament there's no reason not to throw a big bet out there if you aren't sure what to do. In fact, many matches have been won by a player having the gumption to take this advice and slide a big stack to the betting circle and getting lucky enough to hit a big blackjack or double down to take the monster lead.
If you make a small bet, those BJs and doubles don't mean nearly as much. You also have the option to surrender, but here is a tip: you want to avoid that in most situations with a big bet on the table.
So what is the best advice if you make a big bet and win it?
Depending on the size of your lead, you will probably want to try and correlate your bets with those immediately behind you and just hope for the same results on each hand to protect your lead. Or if you have a really big lead, you could bet the minimum and make the trailers make a big bet to try and catch you.
And if you lose that big bet? Hey, it just isn't your tournament. Hop into another one and start anew.
