More and more land-based casinos are offering blackjack tournaments. Before you enter a casino or download one of the blackjack tournaments applications on-line, it's best that you know the very basics of how to play blackjack under tournament conditions.

Tournaments work like this: All players begin with the same bankroll; each player is assigned to a table. Players will play blackjack over a specified period of time (or number of hands) and at the end, the player with the most amount of money is declared the table winner. Table winners then compete against each other until they end up with the finalists, who compete for the top prize.

Tournaments are popular because of the competition among players. Unlike traditional blackjack where it's you against the dealer, in blackjack tournament it's player against player.

Blackjack websites offer advanced, qualitative applications that players can download and use from their own computer any time they wish. Tournament applications that exist today have two different formats:

1.      Elimination tournament - after eight hands one of the competitors is eliminated from the table. Once the table is worked down, there is a "hidden bet" that determines the winner of each stage of the tournament.

2.      Non elimination tournament- players compete against all other tournament players and try to win the most money in each of the tournament’s rounds. In this format, no players are eliminated

www.Get21.com is a new blackjack website that offers a free non-elimination tournaments application. The new features that Get21.com is offering are:

1. “Hidden Bet” – Players in the table bet without seeing their opponent's bets. Only after the last player places his bet (before the dealer starts dealing the cards) players will see their opponent's bets.
2. Insurance and Late Surrender - Insurance and Late Surrender are permitted.
3. Double and splitting- Players can double down on any two cards from that have the same value, as well as after splitting. Splitting is permitted for all cards, including 10’s value cards.
4. Quick Tournaments – Quick tournaments are available either in Multi-table or in single-table tournaments. Quick tournaments are defined by the number of hands, not by length of time, and last between 5 to 10 hands.

The features "Get21" is offering allows players to play against each other in tournaments even if they don't have time to engage in a full scale tournament.