This is a continuation article. To revisit Part 1, click here
The winner of the blackjack skills competition wins the Grosjean Cup, named after three-time winner James Grosjean. Runner-up gets the smaller Munchkin Award, named after my co-host, who also won three times but took longer to do so and is also a bit shorter.
With five people at the final table, one of them had to be eliminated fast. Last year I got this far and was eliminated first. I expected attorney Thea Sankiewicz to be eliminated first — after all, she’s a practicing attorney rather than a blackjack player — but I was rooting for her to succeed anyway. Thea and her attorney husband, Bob Nersesian, were at the ball because their law firm successfully represents LOTS of blackjack players against casinos.
The first problem presented was to count cards — literally. Max Rubin started with five single decks and from each of them removed between four and seven cards. Each player received one of the decks and had to count the remaining cards to determine how many cards Max had removed. When the player figured it out, he/she had to slam the cards down on the table.
First slammer was David Y. He was the runaway winner on the written test and showed he was also a fast counter. Darryl Purpose was next, followed by Andy Bloch, Thea, and finally Smoke, who claimed he misunderstood the rules. All the guys got the count right. Thea missed by one. Goodbye Thea.
The second skills test involved memorizing cards. Max spread out some cards and the players had one minute to memorize the order of the spread cards. Then the cards were picked up and the players had to take turns, each naming the next card in the correct order. They would keep going until somebody missed and then the round would be over. With a good understanding of the rules, each player should probably have devoted his attention to memorizing only every fourth card. This is the technique MIT team member Andy used — and then he proceeded to simply forget the second card he had just memorized. Max quipped that Andy should go back to MIT and ask for his tuition money back. Goodbye Andy.
In the third skills test, another deck of cards was shuffled and spread out. Players had to determine whether it was better to play basic strategy with these cards (first one burnt) assuming there were one, two, or three players. Players also had to bet on how confident they were with their decision.
When there was one player only, the house won. None of the players bet that. Against two players, the players split with the house. Against three players, the house won — EXCEPT: We all could see the cards and the player had a 15 against a dealer 5, with the next card being a five, followed by two picture cards. David said he’d take three hands but he was assuming he could hit the 15 with the five he knew was coming. That was against the rules. He was required to use basic strategy. Darryl and Smoke correctly determined that the correct number of hands to be played was two. Darryl had made a small bet. Smoke bet almost everything. David bet half his stack and was now short-stacked.
The fourth skills test was to cut and steer cards. Max had three well-shuffled decks, one with the ace of spades at the bottom and the other two with the five of spades at the bottom. Players got to cut the deck, at least 10 cards, and play regular blackjack, one, two, or three hands, until the particular ace (or five) came out. Their total bet had to be at least one fourth of their current chip stack.
Smoke, who got to choose first, picked the one with the ace. He bet the minimum on the first two rounds. On the third round, where he calculated the ace would show up, he bet a big stack on the first hand and half as large a stack on the second hand. He was pretty sure that the first card out would be an ace, but the second hand was a “just in case” bet.
It turns out he was exactly correct. He nailed the ace on the first hand — which soon was converted into a blackjack. His second hand was a 6-3 versus a dealer eight. He was going to hit his nine, of course, when Max inadvertently turned over the dealer down card — which was also an eight. Max made an instantaneous executive decision that the other players would have both cards exposed on the third round as well. Against the dealer’s hard 16, Smoke correctly doubled down on his nine — only to lose when Max drew a five for a 21. The blackjack on his big bet was bigger than a double loss on his smaller bet, so he did end up gaining some chips — not that it ended up mattering.
When it was David’s turn, he cut the five out of play. That is, because he was short-stacked he decided that he’d play all his chips on the third hand where Max would have both his cards exposed. This was where David had his biggest advantage and he figured it was his best shot to get back into the competition. He had all of his chips bet and was dealt a 20 against whatever Max had. Somehow Max luck-sacked into drawing a 21 for the second consecutive hand and David was gone. It was a good performance, but just the same, goodbye David. Darryl didn’t even have to try the cutting and steering skills test. When David blew out, the final two were set.
On the last skills test, Max set up two identical packs of cards — which were each a subset of the 104 cards from a double deck. The players had to count down what they had and determine the HiLo count. The winner of that test would need to play a preset hand of the remaining cards. This hand was to be played using Barona’s double deck rules. Even though attendees at the ball aren’t allowed to play at Barona, they somehow are supposed to know those rules.
When Max told them to start, they both raced through the deck. Darryl smoked Smoke. Smoke probably had 15 cards left to count when Darryl slammed his cards down to indicate he was finished. His announced count of +3 was exactly correct.
On the hand Darryl was required to play, he was dealt a player 9-6 against a dealer nine. With a count of +3, the right play is to hit (which Darryl did), UNLESS the casino offers surrender. Barona does. Goodbye Darryl. Smoke is the winner.
Although each of the final four members would have been a worthy champion, I was disappointed in how it ended. Darryl was penalized for being the fastest accurate counter. It’s okay to have a speed counting contest. It’s okay to have a contest where you need to play a stacked deck against the “guess the rules” at Barona. But combining them both into the last heads-up event didn’t strike me as a good way to end the ball. To be fair, during the 21 Questions part of the evening an hour earlier, Max did offhandedly mention that Barona had surrender in their double deck games. At the time it seemed like a “throwaway” bit of information, but it turned out to be critical to getting the final answer correct.
Darryl was a good sport about it. He was Munchkin’s gambling partner for 30 years and he was very happy to win the first annual Munchkin Award.
Smoke showed some savvy skills and makes a good champion. Max and he were guests on the February 6 episode of Gambling with an Edge where we spent the evening talking about the blackjack ball. Check it out! And even though I wasn’t thrilled with the way the competition ended, the Blackjack Ball remains one of my favorite evenings of the year!