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Living in P. T.
Barnum’s world
Dear Mark,
I recently visited an Indian Casino in Minnesota that
offered 3-card
poker. Every player at the table had to pay 50 cents
just to play. I
asked what the 50 cents was for, and was told that it is
the only
profit the casino has in 3-card poker. I find that hard
to believe
since I do not know of a casino game that does not have
some kind of
house edge. I rather think it’s greed. Any comments
other than to stay
away. D.B.
In poker, the fifty cent juice per hand is called the
rake; money that
the casino charges for each hand of poker. It is usually
a percentage
or flat fee of the pot—in this case fifty cents from
each players
hand—after each round of betting.
Normally, this fee is tolerable in poker because players
do not bet
against the house, but against each other. How else is
the casino going
to pay for their employees, playing tables and neon
lights?
However, you were hoodwinked, okay, suckered, into
giving up the
additional fifty cents per hand because 3-card poker
DOES have a
built-in casino advantage.
Even if you were to employ a sound betting strategy like
not making the
“play” wager unless your hand consists of at least a
queen, six, and a
four in your hand, the house edge on the “ante” wager is
about 2.1%,
with the “pair plus” slightly higher at 2.3%. A bearable
casino
advantage, yes, but it does not merit you giving the
casino an
additional fifty cents per hand.
Giving them their supplementary fifty cents is akin to
being suckered
into making a sucker bet, which, if you do not know the
difference,
makes you the sucker.
Dear Mark,
Aunt Felicia was always going to teach me Panoochi, a
card game that
had brought her a tidy nest egg, but she died before she
thought I was
old enough to benefit from the knowledge. Can you
explain the game?
Aaron K.
At first, Aaron, I hit a wall finding anything regarding
the card game
panoochi, even with obvious resources like Hoyle, Scarne
on Cards or a
internet Google search. So, I went to my
ace-in-the-hole, Area 51’s
living legend, Blackjack Jack, who straightaway knew the
skinny on
panoochi.
Blackjack Jack, via snail mail (he rightfully believes
his telephone is
tapped) informed me that panoochi is a card game, a
friendly scam if
you will, invented way back when by Zeppo Marx and Benny
Rubin, who
instead of participating in general societal uplift,
duped those
willing to part with their money with this timekiller
card game.
Panoochi has a vague resemblance to poker, in that the
cards are
shuffled, cut and dealt. Those in on the gag know that
there
are actually no rules or method of play, except for the
rule
that none of them can admit to the sucker amongst them
that there
are no rules. A panoochi player could do, play or say
anything, so long
as it made no sense. By the time their mark figured it
out and wanted
to join in on the fun, his wallet was noticeably
lighter.
My first fleece of fortune was against Bob Orlowski
(still the best
bottom-of-the-deck dealer I’ve ever seen) when he
swindled me out of my
Detroit News paper route earnings teaching me his style
of poker. Yours
just happened to be against Auntie F.
Online Gambling quote of the week: “I hope I break even
tonight,” was the
sucker’s philosophy. “I need the money so bad.” —Nelson
Algren, The Man
with the Golden Arm (1949)
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