Poker Suits High To Low
Just like Omaha Hi/Lo, Stud Hi/Lo is usually played “8 or better” for low. In order to Qualify for a low hand to split with the high hand, the highest card in a low hand must be 8 or lower. Therefore, if no qualifying low hand appears, then the high hand wins the whole pot. « BACK TO ALL POKER GAMES.
- Strategy for Beating Jacks or Better Video Poker. She’s making 600 wagers per hour at $1.25 per wager, so she’s putting $750 per hour into action. With a house edge of 0.5%, she can expect to lose $3.75 per hour. Assuming she gamblers for ten hours on her trip, she’s got lots of entertainment for just $37.50.
- Seven-Card Stud High-Low. When there is one odd chip in the high portion of the pot and two or more high hands split all or half the pot, the odd chip goes to the player with the high card by suit. When two or more low hands split half the pot, the odd chip goes to the player with the low card by suit.
Jacks or Better video poker offers some of the best odds in the casino. The best version of Jacks or Better, the 9/6 variant, has a payback percentage of 99.5%, which is better for the player than just about any other game in the casino. Even 8/5 Jacks or Better has a payout percentage of 97.3%, which is far worse than a full pay but still far better than most bets on most other casino games.
But in order to enjoy the high payback percentage, you have to play using expert strategy. The casinos and the manufacturers estimate that players who don’t use an expert strategy are giving up between 2% and 4%, which is a significant amount of money.
How significant?
Consider the average hourly loss of an expert player who’s running true to the mathematical expectation of a game. She’s making 600 wagers per hour at $1.25 per wager, so she’s putting $750 per hour into action. With a house edge of 0.5%, she can expect to lose $3.75 per hour. Assuming she gamblers for ten hours on her trip, she’s got lots of entertainment for just $37.50.
Then let’s take a look at her husband, who ignores expert strategy and just follows his hunches. (We’ll also assume that his hunches aren’t very good.) He’s losing 4.5% of his bets, which means that he’s losing nine times as much as his wife. At the end of the trip, he’s lost $337.50.
That’s a significant difference.
How an Expert Jacks or Better Strategy Is Developed
Computer programs can determine the expected value of any given hand. There are 32 different ways to play any given hand, but only one way has the best expectation for the player. The more often the player chooses to play her hand in that way, the lower the house edge becomes.
But since there are 2.5 million different possible starting hands in video poker, expert strategy groups hands according to types in order to make the process easier to learn. After all, memorizing 2.5 million different potential decisions is probably impossible, but memorizing several types of hands isn’t as hard.
When you consider that 55% of your hands will lose no matter what, you can see that strategy decisions can be narrowed down pretty fast. In fact, a pair of jacks or better will make up 21% of the number of winning hands you get. The small hands, including three of a kind, two pair, and a pair of jacks, make up 70% of the total return on the game.
How to Use a Jacks or Better Strategy
All Jacks or Better strategy tables consist of a list of hands. The player starts at the top, which is the best possible hand, and then moves down until she finds the hand that she actually has. She then plays it according to the strategy instructions.
Different strategy charts offer somewhat different instructions. Below I’ve provided one Jacks or Better strategy that’s easy to learn. The house edge against someone using this strategy is only 0.8%, which isn’t as kind to the player as 0.5%, but it’s still considerably better than just about every other game in the casino. And of course, this assumes that you’re playing a full pay, 9/6 Jacks or Better game.
The Strategy Chart
- Keep any 2 pair or better paying combination, UNLESS you also have a 4 card royal flush. If you have a 4 card royal flush, then you’ll always draw to the royal flush.
- Keep any 4 card straight flush.
- Keep any pair of jacks or better.
- Keep any 3 cards to a royal flush.
- Keep any 4 cards to a flush.
- Keep any pair lower than jacks or better.
- Keep any four card open straight draw.
- Keep any unsuited AKQJ.
- Keep any two suited high cards.
- Keep any three cards to a straight flush.
- Keep any unsuited KQJ.
- Keep any two unsuited high cards.
- Keep any K, Q, or J if you have a 10 of the same suit.
- Keep any single high card.
- Discard all 5 cards and draw a new hand.
One of the main principles behind most video poker strategies is that you want the machine to deal you a winning hand. If you’re dealt a winning hand, you will very rarely discard any of those cards to draw to something else. The only exception is four cards to a royal flush, and that exception is only there because the payout on that hand is so large compared to the other hands.
In fact, you’ll notice that a lot of the strategy focuses on the royal flush. You’ll only see a royal flush once in every 40,000 or so hands, but the payout makes for a big part of your overall expectation. If you have four cards to a royal flush, you’ll always draw to it. If you have three cards to a royal flush, you’ll always draw to it UNLESS you have a winning combination, in which case you’ll keep the winning cards instead.
A four card flush draw is better than a low pair, but both of them are better than a straight draw. The reason, again, has to do with the differences in the payouts as compared to the possibility of finishing your hand.
This strategy requires memorizing 15 lines of rules/guidelines, but it’s far easier than a more advanced strategy. Once you’ve mastered this, you can easily move up to a more advanced strategy with about 21 lines or rules/guidelines, and then you can gain back that additional 0.3%.
High card by suit and low card by suit refer to assigning relative values to playing cards of equal rank based on their suit. No standard ranking of suits exists for card games and not all games incorporate a suit ranking feature. When suit ranking is applied, the two most common conventions are:
- Ascending alphabetical order: clubs (lowest), followed by diamonds, hearts, and spades (highest). This ranking is used in the game of bridge.
- Alternating colors: diamonds (lowest), followed by clubs, hearts, and spades (highest). Similar to alphabetical ranking in that the two highest rankings are occupied by the same two suits (hearts and spades) in the same relative position to one another, but differing in the two lowest rankings, which while occupied by the same two suits (clubs and diamonds) have their relative position to one another swapped. This ranking is sometimes used in the Chinese card game Big Two or Choh Dai Di.
Poker[edit]
Most poker games do not rank suits; the ace of clubs is just as good as the ace of spades. However, small issues (such as deciding who deals first) are sometimes resolved by dealing one card to each player. If two players draw cards of the same rank, one way to break the tie is to use an arbitrary hierarchy of suits. The order of suit rank differs by location; for example, the ranking most commonly used in the United States is not the one typically used in Italy.
Cards are always compared by rank first, and only then by suit. For example, using the 'reverse alphabetical order' ranking, the ace of clubs ranks higher than any king, but lower than the ace of diamonds. High card by suit is used to break ties between poker hands as a regional variance,[1] but more commonly is used in the following situations, as well as various others, based upon the circumstances of the particular game:
Nov 05, 2019 Things are changing fast for online poker. There are four states that have regulated games — Nevada, New Jersey, Delaware, and Pennsylvania – plus legal, sweepstakes poker games in other areas. While the boom of 10 years ago is over, online poker for real money in the US is on the rise again. This is a detailed guide to legal poker sites in the United States. One of the best poker sites for US players is BetOnline (click for a $1,000 bonus). Since this site’s creation in 2009, BetOnline has grown to become one of the most popular internet poker websites in the world with a huge user base and some of the best tournaments available. Ignition might be one of the best online poker sites for US players, but Bovada can sure give it a run for its money. Bovada has an advantage because it has been around since 2004. Therefore, it has the most US players of all poker online sites. Best us poker sites 2019.
- Randomly selecting a player or players.
- To randomly select a player to deal, to choose the game, to move to another table, or for other reasons, deal each player one card and the player with high card by suit is selected. Multiple players can be selected this way.
- Assigning the bring-in.
- In games such as Seven-card stud, where the player with the lowest-ranking face-up card is required to open the first betting round for a minimal amount, ties can be broken by suit. In such low stud games as razz, the player with the highest-ranking upcard must post the fractional bet.
- Awarding odd chips in a split pot.
- In High-low split games, or when two players' hands tie, the pot must be split evenly between them. When there is an odd amount of money in the pot that can't be split evenly, the odd low-denomination chip can be given to the player whose hand contains the high card by suit. (This solution is not necessary in games with blinds, in which case the odd chip between high and low is awarded to the high hand, and the odd chip between a split high or split low is awarded to the first player following the dealer button.)
- Breaking ties in a chip race
- During poker tournaments, a chip race is used to 'color up' large numbers of smaller-denomination chips, and a modified deal is used to assign leftover chips. Ties in the deal are broken by suit.
Contract bridge[edit]
Free Online High Low Poker
In bridge, suit rank during the bidding phase of the game is by ascending alphabetical order.
During the play of the cards, the trump suit is superior to all other suits and the other suits are of equal rank to each other. If there is no trump suit, all suits are of equal rank.
Rules For High Low Poker
References[edit]
- ^'Rules of Card Games: Poker Hand Ranking'. www.pagat.com. Archived from the original on 28 May 2010. Retrieved 24 April 2018.