Well, after Friday I have 147 out of my 150 hours necessary at the Caesars Palace poker room. Since it's necessary to get them in by the end of February, I'd say I'm in pretty good shape.

After I did some hours on Friday playing poker, I checked into Mandalay Bay. They had a blackjack tournament over the weekend and I was invited. I saw a few people there that I knew, like Michael Shackleford and Ken Einiger.

The prize structure was $200,000 for first place, $25,000 for second place, $15,000 for third place and $10,000 for fourth place. Considering that there were 250 people in the event, this was a pretty big long-shot event. I wish that they would not make these invitational tournaments so top heavy.

Another aspect of this tournament that wasn’t as beneficial for skilled blackjack tournament players was that it was an accumulation format where there were three rounds and, in each round, everyone started with $100,000 in chips. The minimum bet was $1,000 and the maximum bet was $10,000. You’re not only competing against the people at your table, you’re competing against everyone at every table. The strategy is to max bet every hand and go for some bigger payoff hands, such as splitting and/or doubling more often.

There is a lot of disagreement among the BJ experts I’ve talked to as to how much you should deviate from basic strategy early. Based on what I saw, I think you have to push pretty hard and try to get multiple bets on the felt just about anytime it seems like the odds are reasonable. I’d say always split 10s against a 5 or 6 but don’t do it ever against an 8 or 9, unless you’re down to the end and clearly behind.

There was another aspect to this tournament. There were special payoffs for people who were in the top finishers in the three rounds of the event.

If you finished in first place all three rounds, you won $1.5 million. Finish top three in all three rounds and you win $500,000. Finish top six in all three rounds and win $200,000. Finish top nine in all three rounds and win $50,000.

Since there were 250 people in the event, the odds of finishing first all three rounds were 250 cubed or one in 15,625,000. Not very likely.

Having said that, your odds were probably a little better because some people won’t show up to play and other people won’t bet the maximum every hand, so let’s give it an equivalent of 210 people. I spoke with Michael Shackleford about the math and if you assume 210 people, it's about a one in a million chance that anyone will win any of the bonus prizes and that the EV per person for the bonus money was about $8.24 -- or $1,731 total. 

I heard that the casino paid a $30,000 insurance policy to cover the possibility of someone winning one of these prizes. The insurance company is getting $30,000 for an EV of $1,731. Not only that, they could probably run these tournaments every week for 100 years and never have to pay the bonus money.

The marketing departments that run these events should pay down to more places and, if they’re going to buy an insurance policy, they should get one of the people in their actuarial department to do the math to see that they’re not being ripped off. By paying down to more places, people are more likely to get their $5,000 and go out in the casino and gamble with it. The bigger the prize money, the less likely the casino will get it back. Also, you make more people happy because there are more winners. As for the insurance ripoff ... casinos probably should NEVER buy insurance on big prizes. But if they want to mediate their risk by doing so, at least have someone who knows math research it a little first.

Well, I wrote a ton, but I did want to mention a couple celebrity sightings. Louie Anderson was playing $2-$5 no-limit hold 'em at Caesars on Friday. He bought in for $1,000. After a while he had KT and the flop was AQJ. He flopped the super-mega-nuts. Other guy went all in and Louie called. Other person had A5 for only a pair of aces. The turn was an ace and the river was a queen putting two pair on the board and giving him a full house. Louie was not a happy camper. Also, I saw George Maloof at 3 a.m. at Mandalay Bay on Friday night. He was playing high-stakes blackjack and sitting with three smoking-hot babes at the blackjack table.

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