How do blackjack tournaments work
 

My local Casino is about to have a blackjack tournament and I know the locals aren't very good - to the point of being shocking (I'm a very basic card counter and I think I have an edge against a lot of the players).

Unfortunately I've never seen a blackjack tournament and this is the first time the casino has run one - What can I expect? What are the general rules and how does a blackjack tournament work?

Re: How do blackjack tournaments work
 

Generic rules:

Each player at the table gets X chips (such as 50,000), and must bet between Y and Z chips every round (for example, 1,000 to 25,000).
After some number of hands (typically in the 20-30 range), whoever has the most chips wins.
Order of betting rotates every hand, since betting last is a huge advantage.

Those are the basic rules. You might see other gimmicks like they have on televised blackjack, but I wouldn't know, since I've never set foot in a casino in my life. (The curse of being 22 and poor.)

I'll let someone else try to give you strategy, since I don't think I could ever hope to describe it anything remotely resembling concisely.

Re: How do blackjack tournaments work
 

For some general strategy, read the strategy articles at BlackjackTournaments.com. The bible of BJ tournaments is Wong's "Casino Tournament Strategy", though it doesn't cover more recent innovations.

Re: How do blackjack tournaments work
 

The big difference between BJ tourneys and just straight-up BJ is that in a tourney, you're not playing against the dealer so much as keeping up with your opponents' betting. Strategy comes in by calculating the size of your bet on a particular hand based on what your opponents are doing.