How Blackjack Strategy Can Teach You About Risk Management in Combat Sports

Regardless of whether you’re investing in the stock market, placing a casino bet, a sports bet, or competing in a combat sports event, risk management is crucial to ensure you can mitigate risk and help insulate yourself from the most severe impact.

These different fields will have different strategies. Still, the overall onus is on risk management, and these variables permeate a range of different sectors, and risk management plays a crucial role in combat sports. Blackjack strategy might not sound connected, but there are many more similarities than you may initially expect, and today we will be exploring this at greater length.

Blackjack Strategy

There are very few casino games where strategy can help you. Poker is the obvious example, and the top players exhibit a lot of strategy and skill, especially in the world’s top poker tournaments. Although some players like to suggest that blackjack has a similar level of strategy, this isn’t the case. Knowing how blackjack works is essential; solid knowledge of the game will help you implement risk management into your strategy. However, this doesn’t

guarantee a win, it just helps you manage losses more effectively, and this is a crucial distinction to establish before you begin to play blackjack, whether in a land-based casino or an online one.

Understanding that risk management will help you if you are looking to play online blackjack for real money is something that all competent players understand. When we say competent players, we don’t mean somebody who can card count. Managing risk is the difference between players who know how to stay within their means and others that lose their money quickly at the blackjack table. Dana White, the CEO of the UFC, is a big fan of blackjack, so he understands more than most how risk management crosses over within these two fields.

In blackjack, a simple example would be if you have 17 from your first two cards. While this is a solid number to hit with two cards, the dealer still has scope to go higher. This doesn’t mean you should hit, but some players will hit on 17, which is dangerous, and probability dictates that you will likely go bust. A wise player, using risk management properly, might fold, and the dealer could go bust. Although this isn’t always going to work, it’s more about the mindset than a direct strategy, and applying this mindset in MMA is something that many professionals do in the heat of battle.

Risk Management In MMA

A solid risk management plan involves balancing the right mindset and decision-making. For those professional, elite fighters who can finetune their risk management and mindset, this can often be the key deciding factor about whether they’ll come out victorious in the Octagon.

However, risk management in MMA stretches far beyond what happens on fight night. Risk management can be years in the making, such as providing the right fights for fighters at the right time, exposing them to risk, and slowly moving them up the rankings. If a great talent immediately takes on a bonafide, world-level fighter, this could spell disaster. If they lose because they fought them too early, this can harm their career.

Risk Management In UFC Gone Wrong

One of the best examples of this is Darren Till, who was tipped to do well in the UFC. After a couple of solid wins, Dana White admitted that he pushed him too early, resulting in significant defeats on huge cards. Still, with better risk management, Dana probably admits to himself that Till could have gone on to do much bigger things in the middleweight division.

It’s not a case of applying the practical risk management cases in blackjack and UFC, it’s an overall mentality, and it’s essential to look at it more subjectively and weigh up the risk-to-reward ratio properly. Till’s trajectory was stunted, as was his growth in the organization, and although he’s looking to return following his release in early 2023, this looks more unlikely, and it’s another stark reminder of the importance of risk management.

Conclusion

Risk management in any area of your life is not going to do you any harm. While some might like to take risks and push boundaries, that behavior and mindset can also bring other components to deal with. Often, slow and steady wins the race, and practical risk management is the best formula to ensure that you give yourself the best chance of approaching your task and have the best chance of success.

Although Dana White might agree with a complete safety-first approach, given that much of the UFC growth has resulted from him throwing caution to the wind and taking risks, there’s also a considerable difference between calculated risk and blind faith. Recently he criticized ex-UFC heavyweight champion Francis Ngannou saying he doesn’t want to take risks and is comfortable taking the easy road, which no doubt will have upset the highly-skilled Cameroonian.

For anybody looking to explore blackjack strategy, it is imperative that risk management plays a key role, and MMA has multiple examples of risk management from a business, promotional, and fighting element, so balancing the risk to reward is vital.


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