Palms has just announced some sort of Ulimate BJ tournament on a weekly
basis. I believe the buy-in is $120. I have my doubts about how worthwhile this
is - hard to say how many contestants might play and I don't know how much
the value of the gifts will be.
I was in a free tournament at the Venetian, which seemed overloaded with
lots of previous Ultimate BJ winners. This may have had a nice celebrity
factor, but it also meant that those with experience in such tournaments were more
likely to advance in each round, thus reducing the odds for the average
player, and enhancing the liklihood that when they got to the final table for TV
televised purposes, there would be plenty of celebrities.
The UBT shows I've seen are pretty boring, since they compress the action
down to only a few hands, so you really can't be rooting for any particular
player. They also fishily say "the winner will share millions of dollars," or
something like that, and at the end you see a huge pile of cash, but they
don't tell you exactly how much the winner wins -- most likely only a little bit
of the cash they show.
So just a cavet before you pay for the UBT or any tournament - check out the
actual EV - how many people are paying, how much are they giving out in
prizes. UBT is a commercial enterprise, and somewhere they are getting the money
they keep giving out on TV to celebrity contestants. Anyone wanting to play
should check out the website to become familiar with the rules, since this
is a far different sort of tournament than ordinary BJ (or other types of
tournaments), with elimination rounds. You must bet aggressively and have a lot
of luck to win.
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