3CP: Confirm this please

Quote: WoO page

Here is the strategy if the player can clearly make out the rank of one of the dealer's cards, according to the card exposed.

2 to J: Raise always.
Q: Raise with Q-9-2 or better.
K: Raise with K-9-2 or better.
A: Raise with A-9-2 or better.

If all you know is that the dealer has a face card, then you should raise on Q-J-5 or better.

Good chance I'll finally play this game this week; I keep thinking about it. Watched it at the Greenbrier a few months ago and the dealer I saw was clearly too well trained to allow hole-carding. They even seemed to guard against edge-sorting with a cover over the dealers cards. If that is the case also this week at a different place, then it will be a short session, hoping I get dealt straights or better a time or two.

I have one question about the strategy above. If the dealer flashes a Jack, while the player has 'real garbage', one's instinct would be to fold in spite of the advice to raise. After all, advice learned early on in stud poker is to fold when beat on the board. So, I am guessing that to raise with 'garbage' the mathematical reason must lean heavily on the increased chance the dealer doesn't qualify, potentially winning the player the ante bet while pushing the raise. Yet this depends on winning the ante even though the player has the lower hand, correct?

Practice games played correctly will give no experience with this, as garbage always folds on those. Trying to 'win with garbage' lower in value than non-qualiying 'dealer garbage' with a practice game took some time! Perhaps that means "why worry about it." I was able to confirm you still get paid the ante in the Wizard and the Bodog practice games. But it's one of those things that bugs me: if intuition says one thing and advice another, I like to see confirmation. It's not impossible to be playing it wrong, to have some guru say "we assumed you knew this rule didn't trump the rule about Q64". Confirmation on that too please!<vbg>

Correct, if the dealer flashes a jack, or less, you raise on anything.

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Many casinos have trained the dealers and put practices in place to prevent flashing. For example, Revel doesn't deal the dealer's hand until the players have acted. Mohegan uses a blank card placed under the dealer's hand as it is taken out of the shoe. Others now use the newer shufflers that are flush with the table.

Thanks.

Interesting that "to not lose the ante" is a bigger factor sometimes than not risking the raise. Of course, when the raise can push as well, it really tips it, it seems.

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If the dealer doesn't qualify, do you have to expose your cards to get paid? I have never really paid attention to this. The only times I have played this game is straightforward, so I have probably exposed my cards with any winning hand.

Quote: tringlomane

If the dealer doesn't qualify, do you have to expose your cards to get paid?

You don't have to have better cards than the dealer under this one circumstance.

Er, something to make sure the dealer is doing right btw. The game seems to lend itself to that problem.

the only time you get any value at all from seeing a flashed jack is when you do have lower than q-6-4. then you get to deviate from the "basic strategy" and that is where your advantage comes from.

Quote: odiousgambit

You don't have to have better cards than the dealer under this one circumstance.

Right, but if your cards end up getting exposed in this spot and you make a play bet with Ten high, and a pit boss that notices this a few times might wonder what you are doing? It's still probably nothing compared to card counting. I'm not even sure if 95% of pitbosses/dealers would notice.

Quote: tringlomane

Right, but if your cards end up getting exposed in this spot and you make a play bet with Ten high, and a pit boss that notices this a few times might wonder what you are doing? It's still probably nothing compared to card counting. I'm not even sure if 95% of pitbosses/dealers would notice.

it's actually a very common play to raise, hoping the dealer doesn't qualify. many players raise blind every hand. others do it with lower than q-high when they "have a feeling."