Pai -gow poker

Hello, the other day a friend tols me that on the table he was playing, the dealer , by mistake, did not include the joker, therefore the game started with only 52 cards, without the Joker. That brought us an interesting topic, whethere was in the advantage of the house or the players had more chances? Is there any way to calculate if the House Advantage has been affected or on the contrary, increased?

Regards

Quote: burebista

Hello, the other day a friend tols me that on the table he was playing, the dealer , by mistake, did not include the joker, therefore the game started with only 52 cards, without the Joker. That brought us an interesting topic, whethere was in the advantage of the house or the players had more chances? Is there any way to calculate if the House Advantage has been affected or on the contrary, increased?

Regards

Well I dont know the answer to your question LOL but.......Did they play the hand without the joker? Because I have never seen a PGP game that didn't deal from a machine. And if there are only 3 cards spit out at the end instead of 4 its a miss deal. In some casinos you cant even look at your cards till the dealers sees the last 4 cards come out. Im thinking this is to avoid people seeing a bonus hand and then only 3 cards come out at the end making it a miss deal, and the player getting pissed?

They are not using the shuffle machine, the shuffle is done manually...

Different card mixtures will affect a game like BlackJack more than any other, simply because in BJ the player has options that the dealer does not.

Therefore, I do not believe it affects the player either way, just changes the chances of hitting any specific hand. But that change affects the dealer and player equally.

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Note: There is no need to post the same question twice.

It sure affects the house edge of the bonus bet!

In terms of house edge of the main bet, it's going to be a very very slight change. Since the joker acts as an ace, it will affect splitting two pair a decent amount. So the dealer will be splitting two pairs a little more often because there is a slightly less likely chance they have an ace, it would be slightly more beneficial for you to keep two low pair together.

That's a lot of "slightly's"

It will also have a small effect on the chance of copying. In Pai Gow Poker, typically, the dealer wins copies.

I agree that the impact of forgetting the joker is minimal.

I think it is a big advantage to the house. Of the seven hands dealt, there is much larger chance that the joker would be in one of the six player hands rather than the one dealer hand. So the dealer is loosing the joker 1/7 times where a player is loosing it 6/7 times.

Even in a hand dealt game the dealer should be checking for the four cards at the end.

I think this would work slightly in the player's favor. The joker often ends up being used as an ace, and ace-high is a common low hand. Without the joker, I suspect there would be fewer ties in the low hand, which go to the banker, and the dealer is usually the banker.

Quote: kp

I think it is a big advantage to the house. Of the seven hands dealt, there is much larger chance that the joker would be in one of the six player hands rather than the one dealer hand. So the dealer is loosing the joker 1/7 times where a player is loosing it 6/7 times.

That's not the reason for any effect. If the dealer does get the joker his hand improves against six opponents.

The rising Joker lifts all boats equally.

Also, the missing joker should have been spotted immediately, even if manually dealt, by spotting three (instead of four) discards.

House ways are predicated on a joker being in the 53 card deck. As is the optimum player strategy. If the player was aware there was no joker this would definitely help the player, as strategy can be altered. The dealer's strategy is a predetermined house ways. This small player advantage would not overcome the 5% commission.

Quote: Paigowdan

Also, the missing joker should have been spotted immediately, even if manually dealt, by spotting three (instead of four) discards.

What wasn't stated was how soon was this discovered?

I'm thinking that this was the first hand dealt, there WERE only three left over, causing a mis-deal to be suggested and that the floor-person made a decision to play the hand out / or give players the option to take their bet back, etc.

Now comes the question of how the edge changes for that one hand.

House advantage will be much higher on side-bets..
Main bet will favors the player as only chances of ties are less..

Sorry for the misspelling..."told" me...

Thank you everybody for the advice, I do believe that there was not big deviation of the odds, so none player or house had any advantage...

It was discovered two hours later, when they changed the cards...there were only a couple of players at the table

Quote: burebista

It was discovered two hours later, when they changed the cards...there were only a couple of players at the table

Wow. I'm shocked. You'd expect the procedure would be to have the dealer cound down the deck. It would be OK if it's done while the players are setting their cards, but do it if for no other reason than to give the dealer something to do.

Quote: burebista

It was discovered two hours later, when they changed the cards...there were only a couple of players at the table

If I was playing $5 bonus bets for the whole time that deck was in played with no joker. I would have been PISSED. And told the casino I want every bet refunded to me that played on the bonus!

Quote: Paigowdan

The rising Joker lifts all boats equally.

Also, the missing joker should have been spotted immediately, even if manually dealt, by spotting three (instead of four) discards.

Absolutely. At both Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun in CT the Dealers are told to fan the remainder (face-down of course). Fan three... call the boss.

Quote: vert1276

If I was playing $5 bonus bets for the whole time that deck was in played with no joker. I would have been PISSED. And told the casino I want every bet refunded to me that played on the bonus!

I hope this was done, and that all bonus play was refunded. The house only gains by eliminating the chance of paying a winning, joker dependent hand bonus.

Quote: dummyGambler

House advantage will be much higher on side-bets..
Main bet will favors the player as only chances of ties are less..

I'm split (that was a pai gow joke. Get it?)...

Technically, in casinos where the players have the opportunity to bank in turn, the effect of tie-hands ("Copy-hands") are actually pretty minimal. When playing heads-up against the dealer, I'll bank every other hand, rendering the element of ties moot. Now, if a casino doesn't allow banking or forcefully keeps the bank 6 out of 7 (or 13 out of 14 in a ziz-zag pattern) times, the effect of the tie becomes more prevalent where more ties benefit the house, less the player. Again, I'm going to go out on an experienced hunch with no mathematical due diligence performed at all and say that some 40-43% of hands have A-x in the low hand (30-34% K-high, ~15% pair, 5% Q-high, 3% J-high or lower). With the joker out, I imagine there to be less A-high low hands with the delta resulting increases that's seen in pairs (especially med/med settings where the A would keep them together in back) and k-high low hands, with moderate increases in the lower singleton-based low hands. I'd also expect to see far fewer straights/flushes and more "Pai Gow" hands (aka "open" hands where the best poker hand to make is simply a high-card in both the high- and low-hands.)

What isn't moot is the commission. Over the last ~7 years or so, I've seen a notable number of casinos take a much more aggressive positioning in the creation of their house ways - more likely to split two pair is the most obvious example of this. But there are also examples of breaking up a straight/flush for a face pair + A-face (sometimes only AK). I've also seen A full-house where the pair was "low" (<= 6, usually) kept together in favor of A-face (again, sometimes AK only) in the low-hand. This aggressive play is likely to win and lose more hands. In a "fair" Pai Gow game (that allows players to bank in turn), this churn is what makes the house money in the long run. A missing joker, as has been pointed out previously, lifts both player and dealer hands equally and both have an equal chance of getting it. So, in that respect, I wouldn't expect it to have an effect. However, it's lack of presence *will* necessarily decrease the number of straights/flushes created. Straights and flushes don't lose often, but they do have a higher percentage of pushing, since they can leave you with an anemic low-hand. Since the lack of joker would mean less of these-types of hands in both the player and the dealer, I would expect a higher win% AND higher loss%, with a lower tie%. Because I would expect the delta of -tie% to be split evenly between win% and loss% (it affects both player/house equally, assuming equal banking opportunity) and wins are paid out 19:20, this is a net positive to the house edge per bet made (although not, if my logic is correct, to bet resolved).