By Jeff Hwang
Hand #1. The game is Three Card Poker. You make a $5 Ante wager, and are dealt A♠A♦3♥ -- a pair of aces, and more than enough hand to play. You make the $5 Play wager. The dealer turns up Q♥9♥3♠, and you win. The dealer pays $5 on both of your wagers, for a $10 net win.
Hand #2. The game once again is Three Card Poker. You make a $5 Ante wager, and are again dealt A♠A♦3♥. You make the $5 Play wager as before. The dealer turns up J♥9♥3♠, and you win again. But this time the dealer pays $5 on the Ante wager, but not the $5 Play wager, for a $5 net win.
Hand #3. Again, the game is Three Card Poker. This time you are dealt 8♦4♣3♥, which is not good enough to play (optimal strategy is to play Q-6-4 or better). But you decide to make the $5 Play wager anyway. As in Hand #2, the dealer turns up J♥9♥3♠, which beats your measly 8-high. Except in this game, you don’t lose, and the dealer correctly pays your $5 Ante wager, but not the $5 Play wager, for a $5 net win.
Why? Because like most poker variants developed since Caribbean Stud, Three Card Poker employs a qualifier.
In Three Card Poker, the dealer only “plays” when he has queen-high or better (Q-x-x+). This has a number of implications when the player makes the Play wager:
In some games using a qualifier – usually those with scalable betting – the dealer pays the play/raise/call bet regardless, and only pays the Ante when the dealer has a qualifying hand. In Crazy 4 Poker, for example, the player starts with two initial wagers – an Ante and equal Super Bonus wager – and can bet 1x-3x the Ante or fold on his five-card hand; the player can only make the 3x bet size with a pair of aces or better. The dealer qualifies with a king-high or better.
Let’s say the player has a pair of aces, and makes the 3x wager. If the dealer has queen-high or worse, the dealer will pay on the 3x Raise wager, but push on the Ante and Super Bonus bets.
Other games don’t use a dealer-based qualifier. Mississippi Stud and Let It Ride are straight paytable games; there is no dealer hand to compete against, and the player gets paid if he makes a minimum qualifying hand. In Mississippi Stud, the player gets paid if he makes a pair of jacks or better, and pushes on a pair of sixes through tens. In Let It Ride, the player is paid on a pair of tens or better. In both games, the player receives a bigger payoff for making bigger hands.
In contrast, Four Card Poker uses flat payoffs, and there is a player vs. dealer competition. However, the dealer always qualifies (i.e. there is no qualifier), while the player only needs to beat the dealer to win.
Hand #1. The game is Three Card Poker. You make a $5 Ante wager, and are dealt A♠A♦3♥ -- a pair of aces, and more than enough hand to play. You make the $5 Play wager. The dealer turns up Q♥9♥3♠, and you win. The dealer pays $5 on both of your wagers, for a $10 net win.
Hand #2. The game once again is Three Card Poker. You make a $5 Ante wager, and are again dealt A♠A♦3♥. You make the $5 Play wager as before. The dealer turns up J♥9♥3♠, and you win again. But this time the dealer pays $5 on the Ante wager, but not the $5 Play wager, for a $5 net win.
Hand #3. Again, the game is Three Card Poker. This time you are dealt 8♦4♣3♥, which is not good enough to play (optimal strategy is to play Q-6-4 or better). But you decide to make the $5 Play wager anyway. As in Hand #2, the dealer turns up J♥9♥3♠, which beats your measly 8-high. Except in this game, you don’t lose, and the dealer correctly pays your $5 Ante wager, but not the $5 Play wager, for a $5 net win.
Why? Because like most poker variants developed since Caribbean Stud, Three Card Poker employs a qualifier.
In Three Card Poker, the dealer only “plays” when he has queen-high or better (Q-x-x+). This has a number of implications when the player makes the Play wager:
- When the dealer has jack-high or less, the player automatically wins on the Ante wager, but pushes on the Play wager. Essentially, the dealer folds when he has less than queen-high, and forfeits against your Ante wager, but does not “call” your Play bet. This is why the dealer only pays the Ante wager when you have a pair of Aces in Hand #2. This is also why you win in Hand #3, even though technically you have a worse hand than the dealer.
- When the dealer has queen-high or better and the player has a better hand than the dealer, the dealer pays on both the Ante wager and the Play wager. This is why you got paid on both bets in Hand #1, when you have a pair of aces and the dealer has queen-high.
In some games using a qualifier – usually those with scalable betting – the dealer pays the play/raise/call bet regardless, and only pays the Ante when the dealer has a qualifying hand. In Crazy 4 Poker, for example, the player starts with two initial wagers – an Ante and equal Super Bonus wager – and can bet 1x-3x the Ante or fold on his five-card hand; the player can only make the 3x bet size with a pair of aces or better. The dealer qualifies with a king-high or better.
Let’s say the player has a pair of aces, and makes the 3x wager. If the dealer has queen-high or worse, the dealer will pay on the 3x Raise wager, but push on the Ante and Super Bonus bets.
Other games don’t use a dealer-based qualifier. Mississippi Stud and Let It Ride are straight paytable games; there is no dealer hand to compete against, and the player gets paid if he makes a minimum qualifying hand. In Mississippi Stud, the player gets paid if he makes a pair of jacks or better, and pushes on a pair of sixes through tens. In Let It Ride, the player is paid on a pair of tens or better. In both games, the player receives a bigger payoff for making bigger hands.
In contrast, Four Card Poker uses flat payoffs, and there is a player vs. dealer competition. However, the dealer always qualifies (i.e. there is no qualifier), while the player only needs to beat the dealer to win.
Qualifiers
| The use of a dealer qualifier to regulate payoffs presents a number of issues in the form of arbitrary rules, arbitrary outcomes, and arbitrary strategies – not to mention outright player confusion. But before we get to those topics, we should talk a bit about the origins of the qualifier. Sklansky, Caribbean Stud, and the Origins of the Qualifier The use of qualifiers in poker variants dates back to Caribbean Stud, and to its predecessor, a game called Casino Poker developed by David Sklansky. |
In his telling of events as explained in an article that originally appeared in the December 2008 issue of Two Plus Two Magazine, Sklansky developed Casino Poker in 1982 (Read the article for Sklansky’s story on how his game eventually became Caribbean Stud). As in Caribbean Stud, the player starts with an ante wager and is dealt five down cards. The dealer is dealt two up cards and three down cards, in contrast to Caribbean Stud, in which the dealer is dealt one up card and four down cards.
At this point, the player can bet 2x the ante or fold, as in Caribbean Stud.
Now the challenge in making a poker-based table game with a player vs. dealer competition is that the dealer cannot play back at the player, and must have a fixed strategy. Moreover, this strategy must be known by the player, thus giving the player an advantage in that regard.
Sklansky realized that he could neutralize the player’s strategic advantage by making the dealer’s strategy unexploitable by means of game theory. In Sklansky’s Casino Poker (and Caribbean Stud) , the dealer effectively (but not physically) matches the player’s ante wager, thus putting two units in the “pot.” The player then either makes a 2x “pot-sized” bet or folds. Facing a pot-sized bet, game theory dictates that the dealer should “call” the player’s bet 50 percent of the time to avoid being exploitable.
If you’re a poker player, by now you should recognize that Sklansky’s explanation is straight out of his own book, The Theory of Poker, originally published in 1978 as Sklansky on Poker Theory.
Sklansky’s solution was to have the dealer “call” with the top 50 percent of hands, which translates into ace-king high or better (the median hand in 5-card stud is somewhere between A-K-Q-J-7 and A-K-Q-J-6). Thus, in Casino Poker and later Caribbean Stud, the dealer only calls – qualifies – when holding A-K-x-x-x or better.
So let’s say you’re playing Caribbean Stud, and ante for $5. You’re dealt A♠A♦4♦4♣3♥ for two pair, and bet $10 (the 2x raise wager). The dealer shows K♠Q♦J♥9♥3♠ for king-high, and thus does not qualify. The dealer pays $5 on your ante wager, and pushes your $10 raise bet, for a net win of $5.
But let’s say the dealer instead has K♠K♦J♥9♥3♠ for a pair of kings, and thus qualifies. In Caribbean Stud, two pair pays 2 to 1 on the raise bet when the dealer qualifies – the A-K-high math doesn’t quite add up (Roughly speaking, the player plays his top half of hands, while the dealer plays his top half of hands, or about half the time when the player also plays; on the half of hands the player folds, the player sacrifices his ante outright, while the dealer only folds and sacrifices his ante to the player about half the time the player plays, or on about a quarter of hands, thus creating a gap. And then the other quarter of hands when both the player and dealer play are a near coin flip, again roughly speaking.). This enables scalable payoffs (the ability to pay more on your play/raise bet for bigger hands). Thus the dealer pays $5 on your ante, and $20 on your $10 raise bet, for a net win of $25.
Effectively what happens is that you the player win more on your bigger hands, but only when the dealer has a big enough hand to call you with. Viewed in that context, the use of the qualifier is quite reasonable. And thus with that precedent – and for better or for worse – a qualifier has been employed in the vast majority of casino poker games developed since.
The Issues With Qualifiers
There are a number of issues associated with the use of qualifiers.
Game Design: Arbitrary Rules and Strategies
In many game designs, strategy is an afterthought. Often times the game is designed, and a qualifier is used to fix the math and make the game work.
In Three Card Poker, for example, the correct strategy is to play Q-6-4 or better. Why? Because the dealer qualifies with Q-high or better. And why does the dealer qualify with Q-high or better? Because that’s what makes the math work.
In High Card Flush, the strategy is whatever the strategy is because the dealer qualifies with a three-card 9-high flush or better. Why a three-card 9-high flush? Because that’s what makes the math work.
Even an expert poker player knowing nothing about Three Card Poker or High Card Flush could not use his skills and reason his way through these games. The strategy is what the strategy is simply because that’s what the strategy is. There is no why.
Arbitrary Outcomes
The use of qualifiers sometimes results in arbitrary outcomes. In Ultimate Texas Hold’em, the dealer qualifies with a pair or better. Now let’s examine the following two scenarios:
It’s completely arbitrary that you would win $20 in the first hand, but $25 in the second. In real hold’em, these situations are identical: You have A-K-high, and your opponent has A-10-high. You win. But in Ultimate Texas Hold’em, both you and the dealer are credited for having a pair because of the open pair of jacks on the board in Hand #2; and because the dealer qualifies with a pair, you now also get paid on your Ante wager.
General Confusion
If you’ve never played these games before, it’s completely confusing to show up at a Three Card Poker table, get dealt a pair of aces, and wonder why you get paid two units (one for the Ante, another for the Play wager) when the dealer has queen-high, but only get paid one unit (for the Ante) when the dealer has jack-high. Or why in some games, you get paid on the play/raise wager but not the ante wager when the dealer doesn’t qualify, while in other games you can paid on the ante wager but not the play/raise bet.
In Conclusion
On one level, qualifiers make sense in concept: The player gets bigger payouts on bigger hands, but only if the dealer has a big enough hand to call the player’s bet. But on another level, there are many issues that come with using qualifiers, and the qualifier is a relic of the original carnival games, namely Caribbean Stud and its Sklanskian predecessor, Casino Poker.
My view is that as the art and science of casino table game design progresses, the trend will be towards poker variants being designed without arbitrary dealer qualifiers.
Jeff Hwang is President and CEO of High Variance Games LLC. Jeff is also the best-selling author of Pot-Limit Omaha Poker: The Big Play Strategy and the three-volume Advanced Pot-Limit Omaha series.
At this point, the player can bet 2x the ante or fold, as in Caribbean Stud.
Now the challenge in making a poker-based table game with a player vs. dealer competition is that the dealer cannot play back at the player, and must have a fixed strategy. Moreover, this strategy must be known by the player, thus giving the player an advantage in that regard.
Sklansky realized that he could neutralize the player’s strategic advantage by making the dealer’s strategy unexploitable by means of game theory. In Sklansky’s Casino Poker (and Caribbean Stud) , the dealer effectively (but not physically) matches the player’s ante wager, thus putting two units in the “pot.” The player then either makes a 2x “pot-sized” bet or folds. Facing a pot-sized bet, game theory dictates that the dealer should “call” the player’s bet 50 percent of the time to avoid being exploitable.
If you’re a poker player, by now you should recognize that Sklansky’s explanation is straight out of his own book, The Theory of Poker, originally published in 1978 as Sklansky on Poker Theory.
Sklansky’s solution was to have the dealer “call” with the top 50 percent of hands, which translates into ace-king high or better (the median hand in 5-card stud is somewhere between A-K-Q-J-7 and A-K-Q-J-6). Thus, in Casino Poker and later Caribbean Stud, the dealer only calls – qualifies – when holding A-K-x-x-x or better.
So let’s say you’re playing Caribbean Stud, and ante for $5. You’re dealt A♠A♦4♦4♣3♥ for two pair, and bet $10 (the 2x raise wager). The dealer shows K♠Q♦J♥9♥3♠ for king-high, and thus does not qualify. The dealer pays $5 on your ante wager, and pushes your $10 raise bet, for a net win of $5.
But let’s say the dealer instead has K♠K♦J♥9♥3♠ for a pair of kings, and thus qualifies. In Caribbean Stud, two pair pays 2 to 1 on the raise bet when the dealer qualifies – the A-K-high math doesn’t quite add up (Roughly speaking, the player plays his top half of hands, while the dealer plays his top half of hands, or about half the time when the player also plays; on the half of hands the player folds, the player sacrifices his ante outright, while the dealer only folds and sacrifices his ante to the player about half the time the player plays, or on about a quarter of hands, thus creating a gap. And then the other quarter of hands when both the player and dealer play are a near coin flip, again roughly speaking.). This enables scalable payoffs (the ability to pay more on your play/raise bet for bigger hands). Thus the dealer pays $5 on your ante, and $20 on your $10 raise bet, for a net win of $25.
Effectively what happens is that you the player win more on your bigger hands, but only when the dealer has a big enough hand to call you with. Viewed in that context, the use of the qualifier is quite reasonable. And thus with that precedent – and for better or for worse – a qualifier has been employed in the vast majority of casino poker games developed since.
The Issues With Qualifiers
There are a number of issues associated with the use of qualifiers.
Game Design: Arbitrary Rules and Strategies
In many game designs, strategy is an afterthought. Often times the game is designed, and a qualifier is used to fix the math and make the game work.
In Three Card Poker, for example, the correct strategy is to play Q-6-4 or better. Why? Because the dealer qualifies with Q-high or better. And why does the dealer qualify with Q-high or better? Because that’s what makes the math work.
In High Card Flush, the strategy is whatever the strategy is because the dealer qualifies with a three-card 9-high flush or better. Why a three-card 9-high flush? Because that’s what makes the math work.
Even an expert poker player knowing nothing about Three Card Poker or High Card Flush could not use his skills and reason his way through these games. The strategy is what the strategy is simply because that’s what the strategy is. There is no why.
Arbitrary Outcomes
The use of qualifiers sometimes results in arbitrary outcomes. In Ultimate Texas Hold’em, the dealer qualifies with a pair or better. Now let’s examine the following two scenarios:
- Hand #1. The game is Ultimate Texas Hold’em. You post the $5 Ante and Blind wagers, and are dealt A♠K♦. You bet the 4x maximum – $20 – and the board runs Q♠J♦7♦4♣3♥, giving you A-K-high (or more technically A-K-Q-J-7). The dealer turns over A♦10♣ for A-10-high (or A-Q-J-10-7), and you win. The dealer pays $20 on your $20 Play wager, but pushes on your Ante and Blind wagers, for a net win of $20.
- Hand #2. As before, the game is Ultimate Texas Hold’em, and once again you post the $5 Ante and Blind wagers, and are dealt A♠K♦. You bet the 4x maximum – $20. This time, the board runs J♠J♦7♦4♣3♥, giving you pair of jacks with A-K-high (or more technically J-J-A-K-7). The dealer turns over A♦10♣ for a pair of jacks with A-10-high (or J-J-A-10-7), and again you win. This time, the dealer pays $20 on your $20 Play wager, pushes on your Blind wager (which pays on a straight or better), and pays $5 on you Ante wager. You show a net win of $25.
It’s completely arbitrary that you would win $20 in the first hand, but $25 in the second. In real hold’em, these situations are identical: You have A-K-high, and your opponent has A-10-high. You win. But in Ultimate Texas Hold’em, both you and the dealer are credited for having a pair because of the open pair of jacks on the board in Hand #2; and because the dealer qualifies with a pair, you now also get paid on your Ante wager.
General Confusion
If you’ve never played these games before, it’s completely confusing to show up at a Three Card Poker table, get dealt a pair of aces, and wonder why you get paid two units (one for the Ante, another for the Play wager) when the dealer has queen-high, but only get paid one unit (for the Ante) when the dealer has jack-high. Or why in some games, you get paid on the play/raise wager but not the ante wager when the dealer doesn’t qualify, while in other games you can paid on the ante wager but not the play/raise bet.
In Conclusion
On one level, qualifiers make sense in concept: The player gets bigger payouts on bigger hands, but only if the dealer has a big enough hand to call the player’s bet. But on another level, there are many issues that come with using qualifiers, and the qualifier is a relic of the original carnival games, namely Caribbean Stud and its Sklanskian predecessor, Casino Poker.
My view is that as the art and science of casino table game design progresses, the trend will be towards poker variants being designed without arbitrary dealer qualifiers.
Jeff Hwang is President and CEO of High Variance Games LLC. Jeff is also the best-selling author of Pot-Limit Omaha Poker: The Big Play Strategy and the three-volume Advanced Pot-Limit Omaha series.