3 Card Poker with Multiple Decks

Hi! I was wondering if any mathematicians can help me with the following question: if you deal 3 card poker with standard rules and payouts but using 4 decks instead of 1, do the odds change (possibly in favor of the player?) I was reading this article about standard poker with two decks: /poker-basics/can-poker-be-played-with-2-decks/ and it does show that the odds change due to the number of outs for certain hands. I was thinking that since certain hands pay bonuses for the ante bet and pair plus, it could affect the odds overall, but wasn't sure.

Unless there are casinos that have a 3 deck game, which I have not seen, the question is moot.

tuttigym

Yes, the odds change.

As the (blocked) link you included says, all poker rules are based on the math for 1 deck.

Flush pairs and trips become possible in 4 deck games.

I'm certainly not a math expert, and I haven't run the numbers. I would expect that the standard rules and payouts would not be offered on a 4 deck variant, and any 4 deck variant would have a house edge that is significantly less beneficial to the player.

I get that with 4 decks that the player should hit a Q42 or higher. So, fold a Q32, J-high or lower.

Sorry, I can't trivially calculate the 3CP House Edge for multiple decks.

Quote: raistace

Hi! I was wondering if any mathematicians can help me with the following question: if you deal 3 card poker with standard rules and payouts but using 4 decks instead of 1, do the odds change (possibly in favor of the player?) I was reading this article about standard poker with two decks: /poker-basics/can-poker-be-played-with-2-decks/ and it does show that the odds change due to the number of outs for certain hands. I was thinking that since certain hands pay bonuses for the ante bet and pair plus, it could affect the odds overall, but wasn't sure.
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Welcome to the forum. And ignore tuttigym’s rude response. With multiple decks there will be more of the big hands like 3 of a kind, which helps the player.

I do not have the math skills to answer your question, but even if someone does, it is more of a ‘project’ than just a simple answer. If you tell the forum why you are interested someone may decide to help.

Hi! Thank you and everyone else for the replies. In a friendly home game, we sometimes deal blackjack and 3 card poker afterwards. In the interest of speed, we tend to go back and forth between the two from the same deck. I am not worried about anyone counting or tracking cards, but so far (over a quite small sample size), the players have heavily won out. So we were thinking there may be more beneficial combinations as a reasoning for such. I was thinking quite simply that there will be an equal amount of combos since you're adding an equal amount of cards, but that poker article got me thinking.

I wrote the program for 3 decks, very easy to just change a couple of lines in my existing code (though I don't guarantee it is bug free). The 3 deck game will take about 4 hours to run on my home computer (it's a dumb program -- but very fast for 1 deck -- I don't want to take the time to upgrade its hashing for 3 decks). The 4 deck game would take about 11 hours to run.

I am going to take a guess and predict a player edge of about 4% with 3 decks.

Super interesting, and I really appreciate it. Is this for the standard 5/4/1 ante payout bonuses? It seems like it's then slightly worse for the player (and probably will be worse the more decks you add).

Quote: raistace

Super interesting, and I really appreciate it. Is this for the standard 5/4/1 ante payout bonuses? It seems like it's then slightly worse for the player (and probably will be worse the more decks you add).
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Yes 5/4/1.

I don't understand how going from a house edge to a player edge could be worse for the player. Maybe you don't fully understand the terminology.

Missed that key word in your response! Read it as house edge. Thanks for the info.