Casino Game 42

I will be playing in a multi-game poker tournament in a couple of months, of which one of the games is Canadian Stud, which I have never played or even heard of before, though I understand it is a variant of 5CS.  Can someone help me with some strategy?

Answer 1:

I only know of John Scarne who ever came up with this game. It’s your regular Stud, except that a fourflush (and maybe even an outside straight) beats a pair, but is beaten by two pair. Everything else is the same.  As a Canadian, I assure you that nobody here plays Stud this way.

I’ve heard of the game, which I believe also travels with the name “new York stud”.  A four flush beats a four straight beats a pair, which is correct in ranking terms I think.   It’s an attempt to introduce sequences/flushes into 5cs and it makes a lot of sense in some ways, though if it was taken to its logical conclusion a three-card straight flush would beat a pair (at least) and a 4-str8 flush would beat a full house, since there are only 1610 of them.  Can’t help you with strategy though: presumably they are only worth going for if the cards are of sufficient size to make a pair worthwhile if you hit it.  If it’s played with limit betting it would be a waste, because 5cs is all about bluff.

Answer 3:

If that is how the game is played, it is also called “soko”, and is regularly played at Casino Ray, Helsinki. The last major tournament there,

www.european-poker.com/tournaments/2000/midnight_sun.htm saw 107 entries with 242 re-buys in the FIM 1,000 ($160) Soko event. This was the largest field for any tournament that week, prize pool FIM 349,000 ($56,000)

Holdem and Omaha and even seven-card stud are unfamiliar to most pit players. But everyone knows draw poker. Would low buy-in draw tournaments bring many new players into poker?

Answer 1:

Recreational players frequently play draw.  Offering this in casinos could tempt them into public poker play and they could then be taught the more popular games.

Answer 2:

Yes, I think it would.  I have met no men and very few women who don’t know the rules to 5-card draw.  Non-serious players, on the other hand, generally had never heard of Hold’em before Rounders. Playing a familiar game cuts the intimidation factor in half, and brings all of the wannabe Kenny Rogers’ in from Blackjack.

Answer 3:

The casino is filled with players who haven’t played real poker; but many of them play “video poker”, which is loosely modeled on draw poker. If you wanted non-poker players in the poker game, draw poker has advantages. “Carribean Stud” is essentially a very structured game of heads-up straight poker. I read somewhere that David Sklansky invented a somewhat more complex version in the early 80s. But when casinos learned that a perfect strategy would nullify the house edge, they weren’t interested, although the average hold was similar to the present game, which was “invented” and patented after Sklansky had given up on his game. The slowness of draw could be overcome somewhat by the same techniques used in table games, including Carribean Stud: alternating two decks in a shuffling machine.

Let me see if I understand the problem. You stop by the casino for a poker game and pick up a free magazine on the way out. It includes several articles by leading poker writers, reports on several tournaments, schedules of future tournaments, reports on poker related activities from around the world and many advertisements which are in themselves quite informative. Now you believe that if Card Player did “a more honest job of reporting”, it would “provide a better service to the readers?” Would you invest in a magazine start-up that required poker players to use part of their bankroll to pay for subscriptions??

Card player has done it again! They continue to write favorable press for their advertisers. July 7 card player magazine “Atlantic City scene”, ‘the taj mahal poker room’s new nonsmoking policy has helped immensely according to both player and personnel alike”. Just for the record , i played at the Taj on a daily basis for a number of years. The Trop’s 10-20 holdem game which used to break up more often than not is a very strong game now. Not only that Trops overall business is up. Why is that? The reason is many of the Taj’s regular players now come to the Trop (both smokers and non-smokers).

What the Taj’s “management team” failed to consider is they violated a cardinal rule in the casino business, “never give a player a reason NOT to enter your casino”. In addition they failed to understand that just 2 or 3 players can mean the difference in a game breaking down or lasting through the night. Getting back to the card player magazine, here is just another instance of them presenting a favorable image to a poker room in this case the Taj Mahal. I would be in favor of the Card player doing a more honest job of reporting as opposed to shedding such a favorable light on every card room across the country. Wouldn’t this provide a better service to the readers? Oh and it would be appreciated if some Card Player staff member doesn’t respond to this post by saying “we as a practical matter must try to appease our advertisers”. This type of journalism is inexcusable.

Answer 2:

Card player and Poker Digest are both nothing but advertisements with articles sprinkled in. Neither magazine will ever do an honest review on a card room, simply because it might offend an advertiser. Read the articles, gaze at the ads, but don’t expect anything but rays of sunshine when you read an article about a card room/cruise/casino/tournament.

Answer 3:

Of the four CP covers he’s had, two were unconnected with any sponsor, while one was for the first major tournament ever held on the east coast (World Poker Finals, which he founded, named, and hosted) and one was for the four-color deck (Yaquinto, which he promoted). The other two covers were given because two different publishers thought that he deserved them. And he felt honoured. Significantly, the four Caro covers have been ranked #1, #2, #4, and
#7 as the all-time most interesting in Card Player history. That’s out
of nearly 400 issues that readers could choose from. He feels honoured by that, too. It makes him feel humble.