Three-Card Poker
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Three-card poker is a poker-derived game played with a fifty-two-card deck. Instead of receiving five or seven cards, the players are dealt only three. There are no additional cards drawn after the initial three cards are dealt.
Three-card poker is actually two games in one. The first game is the base game in which the player tries to beat the dealer with the better poker hand. This is the ante wager. With the ante wager, you are only betting that your hand will beat the dealer. You are not playing against the other players.
The second game is a wager made on whether you will be dealt a pair or better. This is called the pair plus game. The player can make separate wagers on either or both games. They can bet different amounts on either game.
In some casinos, you are required to make an ante bet in order to make the pair plus bet. Your pair plus bet cannot be higher than your ante wager. You should always check the rules before you sit down to play.
The game is played on a blackjack-sized table. There are three betting spots in front of each seat. The top betting spot is labeled "pair plus", where the player puts a wager on the pair plus game. Beneath that are two spots labeled "ante" and "play" for the base game.
The Play.
Play begins with the player making a bet in the pair plus and/or ante spots. After all the players have made their bets, the dealer will give each player a three-card hand. Play begins with the first player to the dealers left and continues clockwise around the table.
If the player has made a wager on the ante game, he must now make his decision to play or fold. If the player wants to continue with his hand, he must make a wager equal to his ante bet in the spot marked play. If the player does not want to continue, he folds his hand and forfeits the original ante bet.
After all the players have made their decisions, the dealer's hand is turned over. In order to play, the dealers hand must qualify by having a Queen or better. It the dealer does not qualify, the player will be paid even money for their ante bet, but will not be paid for the play bet.
If the dealer does qualify, then the hands are compared to determine the winner.
Whist
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To play Whist, you need only basic equipment:
- Four players: Two players for two teams.
- One standard deck of 32 cards (no jokers): You may prefer to have a shuffled second deck on hand to speed up the dealing a bit. One player can shuffle one deck while another player deals the other deck.
- Pencil and paper for scoring: Or make one of your complaining friends all-time scorer!
The object of Whist is to score points by winning tricks. During the gameplay, each player at the table lays down a card. One player leads, or plays first, a card; the rest of the players are honor-bound to play a card of the same suit (or follow suit) if they can. The player who puts down the highest card in the suit wins the trick and collects all four cards.
Each team scores points for the tricks it wins. The first team to score 7 points wins.
Whist cards rank from the ace (highest) to the 2 (lowest). However, one type of card, a trump card, can beat any other card from any other suit.
The trump suit acts as the master suit. If you play a card in the trump suit on a card from another suit, the trump card wins the trick (unless another player plays a higher card in the trump suit). You determine the trump suit in one of three ways (agreed on in advance):
- Cut the second deck, if you have one, and make the suit of that card the trump suit.
- Cut your only deck before the deal starts and make the suit of that card the trump suit.
- Turn the dealer's last card face-up and make the suit of that card the trump suit.
Caribbean Stud Poker
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Some forms of poker games do not have the suspense and psychology of the live player-banked game, but they do involve the poker hand. In Caribbean stud poker (a house-banked game), the player puts his five-card stud hand against a dealer's hand.
First the player makes an ante bet. Then the dealer gives him five cards and also takes five cards. Four of the dealer's cards are down, and one is up for the player to see. The player looks at his cards and then either drops out or bets an amount double his ante. The dealer does not look at his cards until the players bets are finished. When he looks at them, he determines if he has a "qualifying hand." The qualifying hand has at least an ace and king cards high or one pair. If the hand does not qualify, the dealer folds and pays the remaining players a win equal only to their ante bet. The second bet they made is simply returned.
Backgammon: Basic Doubling Strategy (Part II)
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Taking Doubles.
Assume that you have been doubled. Unless your opponent has made a serious miscalculation, he is the favorite Why, then, should you consider taking at all and playing on at a higher stake?
The answer is that by passing you give up a sure point, whereas by taking you may hope to turn the tide of the game and win two points yourself. Thus, if you have a reasonable chance to win, yon are better off taking than resigning yourself to a sure loss.
What constitutes reasonable? One criterion often used is whether you have better than a 25% chance to win the game. However, except in a few well-defined endgame situations, there is no practical way of evaluating what the true odds of winning actually are.
Every position is different, so there is no easy formula for deciding what your practical chances are in a given position. In tact, many of the world's best players often disagree strongly about the merits of accepting certain doubles.
Backgammon: Basic Doubling Strategy (Part I)
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Doubling is one of the most important and exacting aspects of backgammon. Good doubling decisions will often make the difference between winning and losing a series of games. Let us review the rules:
The doubling cube starts out "in the middle". That is, either player may double whenever he feels he has a significant advantage. In doubling, he offers to double the stakes of the game by turning the cube to 2 and passing it to his opponent. The double must be made when the player is on roll, but before he has rolled the dice.
His opponent then has two options:
1. He may refuse (pass) the double and lose the original one unit, thus ending the game.
2. He may accept (take) the double, in which case the game continues with a value of two units — double the original stake.
Backgammon Rules
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Backgammon is played by two persons, on a special "board" with thirty сheckers ("men", "stones"), fifteen white and fifteen black (or red). The board is square, usually of wood, lined with leather, and is divided into two equal compartments, each with a raised wall or border.
The board is so placed in use that the two compartments, known as "tables", shall lie longitudinally between the players. One of these is known as the "outer", the other as the "inner" or "home" table. Which of the two is for the time being the inner and which the outer table is governed by the arrangement of the men at starting. With the checkers placed as in Fig. 1, the right hand is the inner or home table, and the left hand consequently the outer table. The portions of the two latter nearest to each player are known as bis inner and outer tables respectively.
Each table is marked with twelve "points", six at either end. They are alternately of black and white, black and red, or other distinctive colours. The two points in the inner table farthest from the dividing partition or "bar" are known as the "ace" points, and those next in order as the two or "deuce" points, followed in succession by the three or "trois" points, the four or "quatre" points, the five or "cinque" points, and finally the "six" points, next the bar. The points in the outer tables are designated in like manner, but starting in this case from the dividing partition. The ace point in the outer table is more commonly known as the "bar" point.
A pair of dice (or sometimes a pair for each player) and a couple of dice-boxes complete the apparatus of the game.
The checkers are arranged at starting as shown in Fig. 1—viz., two of White's checkers are placed on the ace point in Black's inner table, five are placed on the six point in Black's outer table, three on the deuce point in White's outer table, and five on the six point in White's inner table. Black's checkers are placed in like manner on the points immediately facing these.
Blackjack: Drawing Strategy
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The banker's plays are compulsory, but your strategy isn't. In fact, the values of the banker's first and subsequent cards lead to some fairly complex analysis.
Seeing one of the banker's cards makes a huge difference. Think about it this way: if the banker has a high card showing — say, a 9, 10, jack, queen, king, or ace — his chance of having a good hand from his first two cards alone is pretty high, because any 8,9,10, court card, or ace as his face-down card (he has more than a 50-percent chance of having one of those cards as his second card) gives him at least 17. Conversely, if the banker turns over a 4, 5, or 6, he can't have a good hand off his first two cards unless he has another low card and gets a lucky drawing card.
The sight of the initial card may affect your decisions on marginal hands — hands ranging from 12 to 16 — when you aren't sure whether to stay or draw a card. If the banker has a 2 or 3, you're In fair shape as well because he's unlikely to have a great hand and may well have a poor one.
How To Evaluate A Blackjack Game (Part II)
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2. Where is the cut-card? Is it a half-deck from the end? Three-quarters of a deck? One deck or more? (Any more than one deck is generally not playable in a four deck game unless the rules are exceptionally good, that is, not worse than about - .5% off-the-top.) Does the dealer complete the round when the cutcard comes out, or does he stop right at the cutcard and re-shuffle before completing the round? You obviously prefer the former practice.
Be sure to watch more than one dealer in a given casino; cut-card placement can sometimes vary quite widely from dealer to dealer. If possible, check different shifts, too; shift managers can have different philosophies about the cutcard.
How To Evaluate A Blackjack Game (Part I)
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Generally speaking, foreign blackjack games have rules which are statistically less favorable to the player than the games in the United States. This often can be offset, however, by the use of a bigger bet spread, usually far greater than a player could get away with in this country. In evaluating a blackjack game, there are five primary factors to consider:
1. What are the rules? The player should evaluate the factors on the following check-list:
Blackjack
Read also
- How To Evaluate A Blackjack Game (Part I)
- How To Evaluate A Blackjack Game (Part II)
- Backgammon Rules
- Whist
Blackjack is one of the most played card games in the casino. Blackjack also is the easiest casino games to learn and play. Fundamental game rules are the same at every casino.
The goal of the game is to get a total score that is closer or equal to 21 points than the dealer without going over 21.
If your card total exceeds 21, it is called a busting and the dealer wins irrespective of his total of the cards. In the case that both the player and dealer bust the dealer wins.
In Blackjack rules the cards are valued as follows: the cards from 2 to 10 are worth their numerical values, whereas face cards – Jack, Queen, and King are worth 10 points. Ace can count either as one or 11, depending on the game circumstances. The value of a card combination is the sum of the values of individual card in the hand.
In the event that the first two cards total 21 with any 10-point card and an Ace (11), you have what is referred as a blackjack and you win one. When tie occurs no one wins and a new card combination is played.
