How cards are dealt in Ultimate and 3 Card

I have a question about casinos in Vegas and other areas. In what order does the dealer deal the cards in these games? The reason I ask is because of how the Boot Hill Casino does it. They have a Shufflemaster machine that is programmed to do it a specific way. In Ultimate, the machine spits out 5 cards first, which are placed face-down as the community cards. It then spits out cards 2 at a time, and each 2 card set is given to the next player in order around the table, with the dealer being given the final 2. The dealer then pushes a button that causes the rest of the deck to come out, and then signals the players to look at their cards. In 3 card, the machine is programmed to give out 3 cards at a time, which are given as a set to each player in turn and to the dealer last. So in both of these, table position and the number of players has an effect on the game (example: with 5 players the dealer would get 1 set of cards, while with 6 players that 6th person gets the cards that would have gone to the dealer.) The first time I played Ultimate the guy next to me (my left) hit full house 3 or 4 times within about an hour or so, and the seat to his left was actually open, so I could have sat there instead and I would have received those cards (I was far left, and so receiving cards first.)

What I was wondering is whether other casinos do it the same way, or do they deal cards normally, 1 card at a time to each person until everyone has the right number of cards? And in Ultimate, do the community cards come out first, or last the way they do in regular hold' em.

Let It Ride deals 3 cards at a time. Carribean Stud deals 5 at a time. Pai Gow Poker deals 7 at a time. Etc.

That, and your observations, are normal. I.E. All casinos do that.

While it affects the cards you get, it untimately does not affect anything, because the deck could have been shuffled in such a way that, if dealt traditionally, the exact same deal would occur. I.E. The machine is not doing anything sneaky behind the scenes.

Doing it that way makes the deal faster, so there are more hands per hour (a VERY important detail to the casinos), but has no other affect on the game.


Unless I'm mistaken, the only games that use machines to shuffle, but are still dealt traditionally, are BlackJack (and all 21 variants) and real poker.

Every casino I've ever been to does it the way you're describing, where everyone gets their cards at once. it really speeds things up, and the casino is all about hands/hour. If the cards in 3 card came one at a time, the dealer would have to make 3 times as many "deals" per hand and there would be fewer hands per hour.

Also, the community cards in Ultimate have to come out first. That group has 5 cards and not 3, so when the table is not full that's the easiest way to make sure that the right cards are out there.

I pretty much figured it was that way at most places, but I had seen posts about players catching hole cards, and I don't see how that could happen with this type of dealing unless the dealer is just terrible, so I thought maybe some places were dealing the other way and that was how the players were catching hole cards.

As for Ultimate, I realize the easiest way to do it is to have the community cards come out first as a 5 card group, and then the rest of the groups come out in 2s. But, I wouldn't think it would be too hard to develop a machine that would send out 2 card groups first, then push a button and have a 5 card group come out last. At worst you might have to burn one 2 card group that came out before you pushed the button. Or even develop a machine that would have a way to input the number of players (plus dealer) and have it send that number of 2 card groups out, and then the 5 card group. I realize that statistically speaking this should have no effect on the cards, but I would prefer for Ultimate to be dealt as close to the same way as regular Texas Hold' Em, which means the community cards should be dealt last, not first.

Quote: rdw4potus

Every casino I've ever been to does it the way you're describing, where everyone gets their cards at once. it really speeds things up, and the casino is all about hands/hour.

It can also slow the game down.

I played 3 card at Fitzgerald's in an empty table, just me and the dealer. it would ahve been faster had the dealer taken the shuffled deck and dealt each of us three cards. As it is, we had to wait for the machine to spit out all the sets first.

On a full table, though, it's much faster.