3 Card Hold 'Em

I noticed on the table in the Wizard's analysis of this new game at the Golden Nugget, that the probability of getting two suited cards to win the "Pair or Suited" side bet is .232278.

Isn't the correct probability .235294, a.k.a., (12/51)? Once you are dealt the first card from a 52 card deck, your odds of getting a matching suit for the second will be the 12 remaining suited cards, divided by the 51 total cards that remain. I am not sure where .232278 comes from. It's a small difference, but what am I missing?

Quote: Ayecarumba

I noticed on the table in the Wizard's analysis of this new game at the Golden Nugget, that the probability of getting two suited cards to win the "Pair or Suited" side bet is .232278.

Isn't the correct probability .235294, a.k.a., (12/51)? Once you are dealt the first card from a 52 card deck, your odds of getting a matching suit for the second will be the 12 remaining suited cards, divided by the 51 total cards that remain. I am not sure where .232278 comes from. It's a small difference, but what am I missing?

AK suited has its own pay line.

Thanks for that miplet. What was throwing me off was that the table states that there are "308 combinations" of suited cards that will produce a win on this side bet. However, there are four suits that each have 154 possible winning combinations (12 each if dealt a 2 through Q for the first card, and 11 each for the K and A) for a total of 616 possible winning two card hand possibilities. The thing is, half of these are duplicates since the sequence that you get the two cards in doesn't matter.

I've also noticed that in the review of the game the wizard only calculates the house edge on the ante which is about 3%. He doesn't give you any strategy though. On the website discountgambling.net (which is endorsed by the wizard) the author gives you a strategy that he claims cuts the house edge back to 0.6%.

Quote: I constructed a reasonably simple strategy, and was very surprised to see it simulate at only a -0.60% EV! This is pretty good for a carnival game, which usually has between a 2.5% to 3.5% house edge. My simple strategy isn’t very optimal, and I estimate the actual house edge is very close to 0. (The error EV of my simple strategy simulates around 0.5%, so an optimal strategy would yield close to 0 EV.).

With a advanced strategy this game could have a lower house edge than BJ...

If you read the comments on Discount gambling he goes on to state that the real edge is -3.0494.

Please keep in mind that I took the easy route with that page and based it on the math report by Stanley Ko. It takes a lot of time to analyze poker-based games myself, so looked at it as reinventing the wheel. I will add a link to the Discount Gambling strategy.

Quote: Wizard

Please keep in mind that I took the easy route with that page and based it on the math report by Stanley Ko. It takes a lot of time to analyze poker-based games myself, so looked at it as reinventing the wheel. I will add a link to the Discount Gambling strategy.

You should add something about your own play ;)

BTW I looked at it whenever I passed through the Nugget. I saw a few more bad beats like those we saw the first night. It strikes me that straights and flushes ought to be rather common. after all, in regular 5 card draw poker, you get a lot of hands with 3 to a straight or to a flush; those are straights and flushes in this game.

Yup, there are lots of straights and flushes in that game. It calls for a much different strategy than Three Card Poker.

For my odds site I try to stick to the facts as much as I can. The rest may be interested to know that Nareed was watching me play over my shoulder, as I think I went about 2-20 at that game.

Any Place to practice the game?

Quote: Wizard

For my odds site I try to stick to the facts as much as I can. The rest may be interested to know that Nareed was watching me play over my shoulder, as I think I went about 2-20 at that game.

At least the dealer was quite sympathetic, even if he kept pushing for side bets.