Blackjack Tournament Questions

[jba]

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An example of tournament strategy. Say you are in the lead, and another player has to win and you lose in order to take the lead. You have a stiff hand against a dealer's ten that basic strategy says to hit. Stand. Now the other player has to take a chance of busting to beat the dealer. Even if the other player doesn't bust and wins, if the dealer busts, you still have the lead.

Similar to having AA when on the bubble with some short stacked players in a tourney. Fold.

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maybe I'm being dense but this seems wrong. standing instead of hitting a stiff hand vs a dealers ten lowers your EV while not having any effect on variance, right? this is totally different than your poker AA strategy, because you havent already put out your bet - you are sacrificing EV while eliminating variance.

I can understand how refusing to split would possibly be a good idea in situations like this though.