Elimination Blackjack is the New Black
There’s a new conversation piece you need to be updated on next time you go to a fancy dinner party. You may have heard the buzz in the street, or seen it happen in front of your eyes on CBS. A select group of people have even tried it out, and your faithful Spinner is one of those. Elimination Blackjack – it certainly has something to be said for it.
Okay, frankly, the group of Elimination Blackjack players is not really that select (it just made a nice introduction, don’t you think). But at least I didn’t belong to it until recently and now I do. Playing blackjack against other players adds a whole lot of excitement to this fine old game. The game is played as an elimination tournament, player against player, with the button moving clockwise, players betting small or big or even moving all-in, and players being eliminated, just like in poker tournaments.
During the 30 hands that the tournament lasts, there are three so called elimination hands after which the player with the least chips is eliminated. When such a hand approaches, the pressure rises on the short-stacked player, as he or she is forced to bet strongly in order to try and build up the stack and catch up with the other players – who in this situation will invariably be making minimum bets to increase the pressure and force the short stack to put its existence at risk.
Players acting in turn opens up for some quite complex decision making. You have to take into account such factors as the opponents’ chip stacks, their up-cards as well as the dealer’s, and their actions so far in the round. To really spice things up, each player can make a secret bet, thus hiding the bet amount from the opponents. But only once in the tournament!
In the picture below you can see me busting out in the very first hand of the tournament.
That’s my recommended play, no kidding. I mean, with $0 buy-in and winner takes it all, clearly you need to maximize your variance. Good luck!
/Spinner
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