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 50-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, 50 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, OK, suckered, into giving up the additional
50 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 50 cents per hand.
Giving them their supplementary 50 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 among 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.
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)
