This is the second part of a story about this year’s Blackjack Ball. If you didn’t read last week’s installment, check it out here
The game of 21 Questions as devised by Max Rubin is very difficult. Success requires some specific knowledge, often some mathematical ability, and a lot of fortuitous guessing. In 2013, I won this part of the competition (only to blow out quickly in the skills contest). In 2014, my guessing hat must have been on backwards and I didn’t do well at all. In 2015, I barely missed qualifying for the finals. In fact, if I had only correctly answered the question that I had submitted, I would have advanced to the skills contest. I’ll soon describe how this happened.
To understand how difficult the questions are, consider the first one: True or False: This one comes from James Grosjean, so you’d better pay attention. In a heads-up 2-deck H17 game with one card to split aces, you make a $100 bet off the top as well as a $100 cover bet on the Lucky Ladies with the 1000:1 payout schedule and 4:1 on any 20 and 9:1 on suited 20s. You get an ace as your first card, but the dealer forgets to burn a card and the moron boss declares a dead hand and you leave in disgust. Here’s your True or False Question: whether the Round would have been profitable or not, in EV, depends on whether the game allows you to resplit aces. True or False?
How did you do? Clever guy that I am, I guessed “True.” I have never studied the Lucky Ladies side bet, let alone how it varies depending on the pay schedule. After the test was over, Max read the answer:
We used dollar amounts in this question to simplify the answer: The Lucky Ladies bet costs you $51.46. With resplit aces, the ace would earn $52.07, for a net expected profit of 61 cents. Without the resplit option, the ace earns only $51.39, which is not enough to recoup the Lucky Ladies loss, so whether the round is profitable DOES depend on whether you can resplit Aces and the answer to number 1 is True.
If you don’t agree, you can take up your argument with Mr. Grosjean, but you should probably do it in private, because you will lose.
During the test, not knowing that I had actually guessed correctly, I was silently cursing both James Grosjean and Max Rubin for being impossible. Oh well, I knew it was going to be tough.
All of the questions weren’t that difficult, but some did favor blackjack players who travelled the country. Consider the following: Only one of these statements about casinos that offer blackjack games in the State of Washington is False. Which is it?
(A) There are two casinos named Macau.
(B) There are casinos named the Iron Horse, Owl Club, Wild Goose and Crazy Moose.
(C) There is a card room that offers blackjack situated in a Gentleman’s Club
(D) You can play blackjack after midnight at the Buzz Inn casino.
(E) By statute and state approved compacts, the highest legal maximum you’ll find is $500 per spot.
(F) You can legally smoke herb for fun near a casino located in the town of Tokeland.
The answer for inquiring minds is:
Washington has two casinos named Macau, an Iron Horse, Owl Club, Wild Goose and Crazy Moose and a Buzz Inn casino. The State allows Native American Casinos to accept $500 wagers and there is indeed a casino in the town of Tokeland. About the only place you can’t get down on a blackjack game in Washington is in a strip club, so the answer is C.
I actually got that one correct too. I combined a little bit of knowledge with a good guess. There were a sizeable number of guests at the ball from the state of Washington and I assume many of them got this one correct.
Now for the story of my downfall: I actually submitted two potential questions. Max accepted both (which was flattering), but he also told me beforehand that he was going to dock me one point so that I wouldn’t have an unfair advantage. I had no problem with that, but then he changed both questions!
My first question, as translated by Max, was: True or False. This question was submitted by Bob Dancer in a desperate attempt to get back to the Final Table. Nice try Bob, since you’ve also contributed another question, we’re going to dock your scorecard right off the bat. But I digress. True or false. You should never hold a suited Ace-Seven-Eight all by their lonesome on a Deuces Wild Video Poker game. True or False.
All of my readers should know the answer is true. Many blackjack players don’t play any video poker and of those who do, there are some who don’t have English as their first language. The fact that it was a true-false question phrased in the negative (i.e. “you should never hold”) also made it a bit of a logic problem.
I was proud of the phrasing on my next question, especially the last two sentences: Within 3 people, how many folks here tonight have been on the Gambling with an Edge radio show including Bob Dancer and Richard Munchkin? Do not include Michael Hyland in your count, even though Michael did call in one night, in a disguised voice, when his father Tommy Hyland was a guest, and said that the Hilton sports book used to offer donuts on Sunday morning but doesn’t do it anymore because Tommy ate all the donuts. So Michael asked Tommy on the air why he ate all the donuts?
That was the question I was expecting. Before dinner I canvassed the attendees. I counted heads. (Nobody else was doing this, of course, because nobody else knew the question was coming. Still, if you’re trying to win and you’re going to be docked one point anyway . . .). There were some people I didn’t expect to recognize because they were call-in guests whom I had never before seen. For example, Rick Blaine was on a few months ago talking about his new book “Blackjack Blueprint,” but before the ball I didn’t have a clue what he looked like. I figured 26 people was pretty close–almost certainly within three.
Max, however, didn’t ask the question the way I had submitted it, possibly because he knew by the RSVPs that Michael Hyland wasn’t going to be present. Max asked: True or False. More than 25% of the people sitting at the tables and taking this test right now have been heard on Richard Munchkin and Bob Dancer’s Gambling with an Edge radio program. True or False?
That’s similar, but not the same. Richard Munchkin and Max Rubin weren’t taking the test. Munch was ineligible because he had won three times and Max had compiled the questions. So my count was now down to 24 people. The question for me became, “How many people were taking the test?” Somewhere I had heard that there was room at the ball for 110 people. Excluding Richard and Max, 24/108 was less than 25%, so I said “False.” During the answers, Max announced the number of people taking the test was 93 and 24/93 is 25.8%, so the answer was “True.” It was close enough to be a coin-flip for everybody and I coin-flopped. On my own question. Damn!
When the results were totaled, the players with the top five scores got to play the skills contest. The contestants, mostly preferring that I use pseudonyms, were:
a. Charles Hondi
b. Tony
c. WRX
d. Richie Rich
e. Rick Blaine
Prizes went only four deep and the first contest required contestants to count down a partial deck of cards using the Hi-Lo count including a side count of sevens. They had to be accurate (including the number of sevens), and of the accurate counters, speed mattered. One contestant, Rick Blaine, got both the count and the number of sevens correct on the first try. At this point, I knew I could have competed at the final table. I recently taught myself Hi Lo (it was not the count I used when I played 20+ years ago) and although I am very slow and don’t intend to get faster with a lot of practice, I can be accurate. It took two more rounds for Charles Hondi to be eliminated. The four finalists were now in the money. Each of the finalists received an identical stack of chips and they were required to bet some or all of those chips on several of the tasks outlined below.
The second skills contest involved card memorization. Max spread out a shuffled deck that the players got to briefly study. They then had to give the rank of each card in order until somebody made a mistake. Amazingly, all four players went through 13 cards correctly. On the 14th card, only Rick Blaine got it correct. The others played another round until exactly one more was eliminated, which happened to be Tony.
On the third skills test, the players were told, after placing a bet which indicated their confidence, that each had five seconds to cut exactly 22 cards out of a double deck. Rick Blaine was off by one card. The other two were off by three cards, so Rick received the bets of the others. All three players went to the fourth test.
The fourth test consisted of estimating to the nearest quarter deck, how many decks were in a shoe. There was a cut card at exactly one deck to use as a reference. On this one, Richie Rich nailed it perfectly at 3.5 decks, WRX was off a little at 3.75 decks, and Rick Blaine came in third with a guess of 4 decks. All three continued on.
The fifth test consisted of Max spreading cards and telling the players that they had to decide if it was better to be playing one, two, or three hands against the dealer. The players had to bet at least 100 chips (or whatever they had, if it was less than that) and after this round the person lowest in chips would finish in third place. I didn’t count the chips exactly, but WRX had about 650 (He bet them all — correctly), Richie Rich had perhaps 1000 (He bet 400. This was enough to beat WRX if they both were right but would still leave him some chips if they were both wrong), and Rick Blaine had about 1500 (He bet 100, guaranteeing him of progressing whether he got it right or wrong).
Max spread out A A 10 K 2 4 5 6 7 5 7 6 and told everybody the first ace would be burned. As the cards lay, with one hand dealt the players won; with two hands dealt the player won one and lost one for a push; and with three hands dealt, the player won two out of three. This made the correct answer three. WRX got it wrong, which meant he was eliminated no matter what happened to the other two, and both Richie Rich and Rick Blaine moved on.
The final hand was very much like the final hand from the 2014 Blackjack Ball. In that one, I personally felt Darryl Purpose got shafted. The way it works is both players count down a partial deck and announce the count when finished. If the first guy who does this announces the wrong count, he is eliminated and the guy who didn’t finish his count wins the Grosjean Cup.
If the first player finishing counts correctly, he gets to play against a stacked deck using Barona’s double deck rules — which players are somehow expected to know even though none of us is allowed to play there. Last year, Darryl accurately counted the partial deck before his opponent was a quarter of the way through his own count. Darryl was then dealt a 16 against a dealer 9 and wasn’t aware that Barona was one of the few casinos to offer late surrender on their double deckers. So he hit the 16 and busted handing the Grosjean Cup to a guy who called himself Smoke. (Who was a worthy winner, even if he did luck into getting the final hand correct.)
Were I in the event this year, I would not have finished counting the deck. I would have dawdled all night if necessary. I would have banked on the hope that either my opponent mis-counted the deck or that the hand he was dealt required knowledge of some Barona-rules peculiarity that would prevent him from playing it correctly. Richie Rich appeared to adopt this strategy. Or possibly he was just a slower counter.
Rick Blaine counted the deck quickly and accurately. The count was +3. The hand he got to play was an ace-three against a deuce. A count of +3 was nowhere near high enough to justify doubling (a count of +12 would have been required), so Rick just hit the hand and stood when he got a 5 for a soft 19. Unlike last year, the final hand to be played was very simple and straightforward. Oh well. You can never predict what Max is going to do next!
For those of you who would like to better know Rick Blaine, the GWAE interview about his book was aired on December 4, 2014 and on last week’s show, February 5, 2015, he and Max Rubin were our guests as we relived the Blackjack Ball.
I already have my question that I’m going to submit for next year’s test. I tried to make it so Max won’t be able to change it (admittedly an impossible task — Max is very talented and very devious). I don’t want to be hoisted on my own petard two years in a row!