| Eyes
OK; just a camouflaged rule
Dear Mark,
The answer to this question is probably right in front
of my eyes, but I
cannot see it. I was watching a Poker tournament on the
Travel channel when
player A, after seeing his first two cards, bets
$10,000. Player B, still in
the game but with far fewer chips, pushes all his chips
to the center and
states "all-in." My question is, why can
player B, with far fewer chips and
unable to sustain the future raises of player A, still
be able to challenge
Player A? Ralph I.
Key to this mystery is the "All-in." Poker in
most casinos is played as
"table stakes," meaning that only the chips in
play at the beginning of each
the hand can be used throughout that hand. The table
stakes rule has a
handmaiden rule, called the "All-In": a player
cannot be forced to forfeit a
hand simply because he/she lacks sufficient chips to
call the bet.
A player who does not have enough chips to call a bet is
declared All-In.
That player, if a winner, qualifies for only that
portion of the pot as it
stood at the time of his final wager, not the whole pot.
All further action
among the other players, following a bettorıs
"All-in" declaration, takes
place in a "side pot," which is inaccessible
to the All-In player.
Dear Mark,
On Deuces Wild in video poker, what are the chances of
getting four deuces?
I actually hit one the other night and was wondering how
difficult a feat it
was. This leads me to my second question. I have never
gotten a royal flush
on a Deuces Wild machine. Is it harder in Deuces Wild
than other versions of
video poker? Henry C.
Though hitting four deuces is not the grande victoire of
Deuces Wild video
poker, it is still a neat tour de force. On average, you
will see four
deuces once in every 4,900 hands. As to the second part
of your question,
yes, Henry, it is much harder to get a royal flush at
Deuces Wild than it is
on your standard Jacks-or-better machine, and hereıs
why.
A royal flush, on average, will appear once every in
40,000 hands of
Jacks-or-better. The royal is more scarce playing Deuces
Wild, because we
hold every deuce we get, causing the royal flush to
occur at a lower average
frequency in that game than in other versions of video
poker. Holding all
those deuces statistically changes the royal flushıs
appearance to every
46,000 hands instead of every 40,000.
By the way, though you didnıt ask, accept a freebie:
deuces royal happens
once in every 650 hands.
Dear Mark,
Iım not familiar with the word "street" used
in the connection you used for
last weekıs column on Holdıem poker. Hordes of readers
probably are, but
there may be some dummies like me, who would benefit
from a touch of
jargon-clarification. J. N.
There are four rounds of betting in Holdıem. The fourth
street is the fourth
card on the board, and the third round of betting. It is
also called "the
turn." The fifth and final community card, dealt in
flop games, is called
fifth street in Holdıem and Omaha. It is also termed
"the river" and begins
the final round of betting. See how easy that is? Now I
suppose youıll want
me to define "the turn" and "the
river" and "community card" and
"flop
games," right?
Online Gambling quote of the week: "The serious gambler is
a man who is at war with
chance and all her bitchy whimsy." William Pearson,
The Muses of Ruin
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