72 Strokes Online Casino Games

As you will read in this article, the removal of a pain in the arse, from the poker table, can be accomplished without going under the knife, if you are diligent and persistent.

At the 2005 WSOP, there were couple of players who acted objectionably and (See our 2005 WSOP Views) they received penalties due to this objectionable behavior.

Playing poker will expose you to poker players that consistently believe that their feelings at the table are more important than anyone else’s feelings. They will behave as teenagers, consistently cursing, chide other players for the way they play their cards and money, or are downright rude (toward the female player these “teenage players” will actually make sexual advances via chat).

This is unacceptable in MOST poker rooms whether you are playing online or at a brick and mortar poker room. You do not need to just sit by and “take it”. There are things that you can do in either venue. Below you will find ways to handle both.

ONLINE POKER ROOMS
If you come across one of the above-described players, you can choose one of the following Options:

1. Notify the poker room manager via email or chat;
2. Block the chat of that particular player (in most rooms);
3. Turn off your chat altogether; or
4. Totally ignore the behavior and continue your game; or
5. Surgically remove the poker room from your computer.

When you open your account with a particular poker room, I suggest that you explore what options you have if/when you come up against such offensive behavior.

What do you need to provide to “support”?

Do you need to know the player’s screen name?

• The table number or name of the table?
• When it occurred?; and/or
• Do you need to have information that is more specific to report the behavior?

One poker site, explained to me that I needed to have a copy of the chat log of what happened at the time and then they would investigate.

Then again, you could continuously notify the manager of this obnoxious behavior and see what happens.

Option Two is actually a very simple step in most poker rooms. Right click on the player/avatar and you need to make a choice whether you want to make notes on them or if you want to block them.

Personally, I have a problem with the third choice. You may be having an agreeable chat with someone else or want to have a chat…and you won’t be able to unless you go into AIM or Yahoo Messenger or some other way to chat, but then you could be kicked out of that poker room/site for “collusion”.

Option Four is the easiest step of all, if you have the patience to wait for them (the offender) to be knocked out (of a tournament) or for them to leave. It is very easy to fall into the trap of egging them on instead of getting them to stop.

Then there is Option Five. If you receive no help from that poker site, you may have to choose whether you want to continue to play on that site or remove your funds, delete their room from your computer and not return.

Pair Plus

This is a simple game in which you get three cards and are paid according to their value. The dealer’s hand is immaterial. There is no raising and no discarding, in fact no skill of any kind is involved.

The following table shows various paytables for Pair Plus. It used to be that the only table was pay table 1. Pay table 4 is becoming increasingly prevalent in Las Vegas, especially on the Strip.

Payoff Table for Pair Plus
Hand	Probability	Table 1	Table 2	Table 3	Table 4
Straight flush	0.002172	40 to 1	40 to 1	35 to 1	40 to 1
Three of a kind	0.002353	30 to 1	25 to 1	25 to 1	30 to 1
Straight	0.032579	6 to 1	6 to 1	6 to 1	6 to 1
Flush	0.049593	4 to 1	4 to 1	4 to 1	3 to 1
Pair	0.169412	1 to 1	1 to 1	1 to 1	1 to 1
Nothing	0.743891	lose	lose	lose	lose
House Edge		2.32%	3.49%	4.58%	7.28%

Ante and Play

Play begins with a wager on ante. After the player views his three cards he may either raise by putting an equal bet on play or fold and lose the ante bet. If the player folds he also loses the Pair Plus bet if one was made, however this should not be any sacrifice because if the Pair Plus bet paid anything the player shouldn’t fold.

If the player does raise then he goes against the dealer’s hand. The dealer needs at least a queen high to qualify.

Below are the possible outcomes and their payoff:

• Dealer does not qualify: Ante wins 1 to 1, play bet is returned
• Dealer qualifies and player beats dealer: Both play and ante win 1 to 1
• Dealer qualifies and dealer beats player: Both Play and ante lose
• Dealer qualifies and dealer ties player: Both Play and ante push

The Ante bet has an extra bonus that does not depend on the dealer’s hand. There are different variations of the bonus paytable. The following table shows some variations along with the corresponding game house edge and element of risk.

Ante Bet Bonus
Hand	Probability	Table 1	Table 2	Table 3
Straight flush	0.002172	5 to 1	4 to 1	3 to 1
Three of a kind	0.002353	4 to 1	3 to 1	2 to 1
Straight	0.032579	1 to 1	1 to 1	1 to 1
House Edge		3.37%	3.83%	4.28%
Element of Risk		2.01%	2.28%	2.56%

Three Card Poker Strategy

Rule #1: FOLD unless your hand is Q-6-4 or better.

Seeing Additional Cards: Other Players’ Cards

If you don’t have Q high or better, fold unless you can see the following in other players’ hands:

a) 3 additional cards all of which are Q or higher
b) 6 additional cards of which at least 4 are Q or higher

If you are holding Q-6-4 and the 6 additional cards you can see are all Jack or less, fold.

Seeing One Of The Dealer’s Cards

Some three card poker dealers sometimes carelessly reveal the bottom of a card when passing them from the automatic shuffler to the table. Seeing just one of the dealer’s cards is equal to seeing 40 other cards. Seeing one of the dealer’s cards gives you a significant 3.48% edge on the house. If you are so fortunate, this is a great time to bet the table maximum based on the following:

• Play all hands if the dealer’s card is a Jack or less
• Play Q-9-2 or better if the dealer’s card is a Queen
• Play K-9-2 or better if the dealer’s card is a King
• Play A-9-2 or better if the dealer’s card is an Ace

For most people, there are only two real reasons to play poker: fun and profit, which are sometimes interrelated (more profit means more fun).

But in order to make money by playing poker online, you should always be gathering information about your opponents and, why not, about yourself. Asides that, another vital thing is the ability to determine, use and understand pot odds, which is one of the most underrated concepts for beginning online poker players. Pot odds are calculations used during a game of poker that put the concept of risk and reward into numbers. In this article, we provide you with an explanation of pot odds in order to help you start using them in your game.

Whenever you are in a hand and need to decide whether or not to call a bet, count how many cards that are still unseen that can come on the turn and/or river that can help you. Then check the number on the chart below to get the pot odds. For example, you have A5s with two more of your suit on the flop. Therefore you have 9 outs to make the nut flush. Your odds of hitting it on the turn are 4.2 to 1 and to hit it on the turn or river 1.9 to 1. If you are only concerned about hitting it on the turn, the pot must have at least 4.2 times the amount you must place in the pot to make this a profitable call. If you are playing no-limit holdem and a player has moved all-in, if there is at least 1.9 times the amount you have to call in the pot it is a correct call and will be profitable in the long run. Pot odds are just a quick way of seeing if a bet will be profitable if you are in the same situation thousands of times.

A thing that’s often confusing to beginning online poker players is that they think that the money in the pot somehow goes into the computation of the pot odds. Actually, any money in the pot is not yours. It was yours before you put it in the pot, but the only way to get it back is to win the pot. This is the reason that money you have already placed in the pot is not used in pot odds computation.

Remember to always get your money in with the best of it and over the long run you will be not only a winning online poker player, but a profitable one too.

Three card Poker is a fast paced game which is easy to learn for the novice card player. This game is played with a 52 card deck and is played between a dealer and a single player.

The player and dealer are each dealt 3 cards which are placed face down. The object of the game is for you to get a higher three card poker hand than the dealer. An important rule that people must remember when playing three card poker is regarding the hand ranks. In three card poker a straight is higher than a flush because there are fewer ways to make a 3 card straight than a 3 card flush.

There is little strategy and absolutely no bluffing involved in this game, which is why I said at the beginning that it is a game for the beginner. The main decision in this game comes when the player first looks at the cards he is dealt. Here he must decide whether to fold or to raise. In three card poker a raise means you are paying to see the dealer’s cards.

Three Card Poker is America’s fastest growing specialty table game. This is a fast and exciting poker game that offers three ways to play and four different ways to win. The three-card format makes the game quick and easy to play, and players can bet on their own hand or against the dealer or both. More and more players are drawn to the game because of its simplicity, action level and competitive house advantage.

Three Card Poker was invented by Derek Webb of Prime Table Games. Three Card Poker is derived from a centuries old game called Brag (which later wound up in India as Flush).

Of the one million games played in Webb’s computer simulation tests, the player’s hand ranked as a Queen High or Better in 687,674 hands. The player wagered on Play while folding on 312,326 hands. The total at stake was 1,687,674 bet-unit (Antes + Plays).

The Dealer qualified in 473,924 of the games and folded in 213,750. In the showdown, the dealer won 233,643 and the player won 238,408 hands. 1,873 were pushes.

As a result, the player lost 89,045 bet-units (5.72% of the total) before any bonus awards were included. The bonus awards added up to 52,852 bet-units, diminishing the house win to 36,194 bet-units and a house advantage of just 2.14 percent.

Real Time Gaming produced the initial online software for Three Card Poker and changed the name to Tri-Card Poker, as it is known on the online casinos that offer it.

Three card poker is really two games in one. The player may bet on either one, both, and in different amounts. Both games are based on hands consisting of three cards. A straight is harder to form than a flush.

Probabilities – Three Card Poker
Hand	Combinations	Probability
Straight flush	48	0.0021719
Three of a kind	52	0.0023529
Straight	720	0.0325792
Flush	1096	0.0495928
Pair	3744	0.1694118
Queen to ace high	9720	0.4398190
Jack high or less	6720	0.3040724