If you think that playing in a blackjack tournament is no different than playing blackjack on any night of the week at a casino, you would be wrong. Tournament blackjack has some other considerations for one reason: you are playing to beat the other players.
I know, that sounds like it goes against all things blackjack, against the core concept of blackjack. And I can see how you would think that. Blackjack is the casino game in which you are playing one on one against the dealer; you could not give a fig about the other players because what they do has no impact on you and your game. You always hope that the dealer loses since you profit from beating him.
In tournament blackjack you are playing against the other players for a shot at the grand prize. Yes, there is a dealer and yes, you have to beat him in order to win chips. But at the end of the tournament it is the player with the most chips who wins even if you won more individual hands than he did.
That is the core point behind tournament blackjack: you have to beat the dealer to wind up with more chips than everyone else in the tournament. It is here that how the other players play out their hands and how they wager becomes important, so you had better give a fig.
Strategy for tournament blackjack will vary from some from the strategy you use in ordinary blackjack. This is because an increased skill level is necessary for you to beat both the dealer and the other players in the tournament. Tomorrow we will look a little more closely at some basic strategy points for tournament blackjack.