| Now for a few more enlightening stats.I often get e-mails from readers on blackjack and poker strategy, but the other day I received an unusual inquiry concerning the game of Caribbean Stud. It read: Dear Fred, I enjoy all your columns, but we need an article on the odds of playing Caribbean Stud "in the blind" (staying on every hand). Caribbean Stud, as most of you know, is a house-banked poker derivative in which you play your five-card hand heads up against the dealer's five-card hand. Even though there may be as many as seven players at the table, each player's hand is pitted directly against the dealer's, just as in blackjack. Now, proper playing strategy for Caribbean Stud has been published in numerous places over the years. The house edge can vary by about a tenth of a percent depending upon how detailed you care to get in selecting your Ace/King hands (you should always play any pair). About the most practical version is to simply play any A-K-J-8-3 or better, and fold anything weaker. This produces an overall house edge of 2.6% and gets things down to within a few hundredths percent of much more complex strategies. Playing that way, you'll fold 46% of your hands and put up the additional 2 units 54% of the time. Now, if playing 54% of your hands to the river feels "too tight" for your appetite, then let's break down the "play all" strategy and see what that does to the house edge in this game. First off, playing those 46 extra "bad" hands out of every 100 will increase your total action from an average of 2.08 units up to the full 3 units per hand. On just about 20 of them, the dealer won't qualify (she qualifies 56% of the time) so you'll win a one-unit ante those 20 times. The other 26 times she will indeed qualify and on more than 25 of those, you'll lose three units. Finally, on just a fraction of one hand, your bad Ace/King will actually beat the dealer's even worse Ace/King, winning you three units. After it all shakes out, rather than folding and giving up those 46 one-unit antes, you'll now drop 57 units on those 46 extra hands. The net percentage effect is that by playing every hand you'll be raising the house edge to 5.5%! So, how much money are we talking here? At a moderately filled Caribbean Stud table, they usually deal about 35 rounds an hour. If you're anteing $5 and playing right, each hour you'll ante $175 and play out 19 of those 35 hands for an additional $190 worth of action. That's $365 in total volume for an average hour of play. Since you'll have a 2.6% overall disadvantage, you can expect to lose around $9.50 per hour -- plus or minus the luck factor, as always. Now, if you play every hand instead, you'll put in $15 on all 35 hands for $525 worth of volume. Since the house will beat you out of 5.5% of your total action, you can expect to lose around $29 per hour. So you see, not only has your percentage of disadvantage gone up, your betting volume has as well.Day after day, I sit at the blackjack tables and watch players throw money away by making irrational mistakes. Many of these people appear to be quite experienced at the game and are playing for serious money. When they come out of the blue with some of these beauties I have to wonder to myself, "What were they thinking?" |
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