Blackjack tournement at LV Hilton

I just found out that there is a blackjack tornement taking place 5-7 July during my vegas trip so I thought I would share it with the forum.

There is a prize pool of $100 000, with $50 000 for first paying down to $1000 for 22nd place.

Entry is free so long as you can hit a suited blackjack from a $10 bet playing regular blackjack. The only other cost (aside from the monorail) is an optional 'mulligan' that can be purchased for $100 of real money and can be used to exchange a card at anytime.

Not sure how many players this might attract, I'm guessing several hundred.

Anyone else here likely to be taking part?

Thanks for the news jon. I'm not going, but good luck and please keep us posted.

Are there rebuys? I am wondering how they will make up the 100g's?

Such LVH tournaments are not worth going out of your way for. They will invite a huge number of people, pushing 1,000. Then they will charge for such things as "second chance" cards or re-buys. I've won such tournament entries before but decided the value was not worth showing up for.

no number crunching for what the expected playing time would be to hit a suited BJ, with standard deviation?

I assume this is: Play blackjack with and for non-cashable Tournament Chips, endure whatever re-buy-ins are available, march up some sort of invisible and somewhat whimsical ladder until you are finally 22 or higher when the whistle blows, else you've pretty much wasted your time if you are 23 or lower.

I guess it depends on whether the buffet at LVH is any darn good and how you do playing there after the tournament ends.

Quote: odiousgambit

no number crunching for what the expected playing time would be to hit a suited BJ, with standard deviation?

A good and convenient rule of thumb is you get a blackjack about once every 21 hands. So a suited blackjack once every 21*4=84 hands, because 1 in 4 blackjacks are suited. According to my hands per hour guide, there are 72 per hour in blackjack. So it would take on average about 70 minutes to get a blackjack. The standard deviation is also the expected time between such events, or 70 in this case.

Quote: Wizard

Such LVH tournaments are not worth going out of your way for. They will invite a huge number of people, pushing 1,000. Then they will charge for such things as "second chance" cards or re-buys.

I suspected that this might attract a lot of hopefuls so my expectations of cashing will be accordingly low. I have no plans to buy that $100 mulligan card (unless I somehow get into the cash then maybe).

I will be there mostly out of curiosity, I can't begin to imagine what a room full of 1000 blackjack players looks like. I hope not everyone will be taking it too seriously - it's a freeroll after all.

I doubt I would have even bothered with the detour to the LVH if not for the freeroll tournement. Hope it's worth the monorail ticket.

If you have ever played in Blackjack tournaments, you are going to want that mulligan to have a realistic chance of advancing through the various rounds. A mulligan has value. Especially, since it appears you get to use it once per session that you play. I use about 15% added to my chances to win a hand, before the cards are dealt, when I have a mulligan. In other words, I believe I have about a 60% chance of winning a hand versus the usual 44%. Most of the time, a person has to make a big bet and win it to advance from one round to the next in tournaments.

Above someone wondered where the Hilton got their 100K. I believe just the $100 mulligans alone will generate 70K from 700 people. I have not been in the Hilton since the early 2000's when they were having their million dollar tournaments and have no idea what % of people buy the mulligan, but I would.

Their prize structure of top 22 getting something is interesting. Usually, it would be everybody in the semi-finals (with the same number of people at the table) or something like that, but 22 is an odd amount. I assume it some kind of wild card arrangement (probably 6) to make 7 tables of 4 where the winner goes to the finals and the wildcards are not eligible for the 8th-22nd place. I have never played in one these.