Justin Ross

I hate Acey Deucey. I never seem to win but, the game always seems to come up during dealer's choice poker nights. I always see people win on marginal spreads and others lose big with A-K on the table. So what is the correct betting strategy to win in the long run?

I finally sat down and did the math one night and figured out when it is actually profitable to bet. The results may not be too surprising but, it might make you think twice before yelling pot the next time a 4-Queen spread lands in front of you.

We find that, in the long run, it is only smart to bet when you have a 8,9,10,11, or 12 card spread on the table. In the long run, if you bet on a 7 card spread you will break even with your money. If you bet on anything with a smaller spread than that you will be losing money in the long run. This might be surprising but, we need to remember that you will pay double if you hit one of the two cards (posts) showing on the table.

So how's this work? For an example, we will look at what happens 3-Jack is on the board. This gives us a 7 card spread. There are 28 other cards in the deck that will win and 16 cards that will cause us to lose and 6 cards that will make us pay double. Given 50 opportunities to bet this for $1 the odds say that we will win 28*1 = 28 dollars. It also says we should lose 16*1 + 6*2*1 = 28 dollars. The same holds true for every other possible card combination. 

Of course you can always improve your odds by counting cards but, I know that I am not quite at that level yet. You can see the .xlsx detailing all this information here: AceyDeucy.xlsx  

What is the meaning of life?

1. Be happy
2. Help others be happy

This is my first post here. I can't imagine updating the blog much. But, from time to time I might be fooled into thinking I did something interesting enough to post.