Archive for the ‘Tutorial’ Category

Splitting Pairs – Double your Cards, Double your Money?

Friday, December 7th, 2007

split aces blackjackSplitting pairs in blackjack gives you the chance to split a pair and play two separate hands with one new card for each.

The dealer will then deal you an additional card to each hand, and you will play each hand individually. It is important to know the different splitting pair types when you play blackjack. Not every pair should be spilt.

You should ALWAYS split a pair of Aces. Just over 30% of the cards in a single deck have a value of 10, so you have a good chance of hitting two more 10 cards and to improve both your hands into a blackjack. (Although the house may not pay out 3:2 on Blackjacks that come from split Aces).

Don’t split 10s you numpty. 20 is a winning hand. If you split 10s the dealer is morally obliged to slap you with a wet fish.

You should always split 8s. A total of 16 is not good enough to stand but you are likely to bust almost two thirds of the time if you hit. With a large proportion of the pack being 10s you have a good chance of ending up with two hands with a total of 18.

For other hands the decision should be made based on the dealer’s upcard.

Dealer’s Up Card

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

T

A

Pairs

2 2

P

P

P

P

P

P

H

H

H

H

3 3

P

P

P

P

P

P

H

H

H

H

4 4

H

H

H

P

P

H

H

H

H

H

5 5

D

D

D

D

D

D

D

D

H

H

6 6

P

P

P

P

P

H

H

H

H

H

7 7

P

P

P

P

P

P

H

H

H

H

8 8

P

P

P

P

P

P

P

P

P

P

9 9

P

P

P

P

P

S

P

P

S

S

10’s

S

S

S

S

S

S

S

S

S

S

A’s

P

P

P

P

P

P

P

P

P

P

Action: H = Hit S = Stand D = Double P = Split

I would stress that like doubling up; splitting pairs can also affect the effectiveness of your betting strategy. This is especially true if you are using the Paroli or Martingale system. You should make the decisions about when you are going to split pairs and the effect it might have on your betting system and stick to them.

Something Unusual in the Poker Room – Rough guide to Chinese Poker

Thursday, November 29th, 2007

chinesepoker.jpgChinese Poker is a fascinating version of poker that’s very different to most other poker variants. It is rare to find, but when you do you might be pleasantly surprised. Chinese poker is fourhanded as a maximum as having been dealt 13 cards face down, you must separate them into 3 different hands. The first hand (a hand of five) must better then your second (another hand of five) and your second better then your last (three card hand).

You have one minute to arrange your hand then hands are scored. Yes that’s it just a minute.

The objective in Chinese Poker is the same as normal poker but you playing with 3 separate hands. As you can imagine there are a lot of different combinations in Chinese poker, which is what makes it so interesting.

After arranging the hands all players compare their hands to each other and the winner in each individual game receives a number of points, determined by how many hands they have won.

This is how you score points after each round:

• Player A vs. Player B
• Player A vs. Player C
• Player A vs. Player D
• Player B vs. Player C
• Player B vs. Player D
• Player C vs. Player D

A point for each winning player. Confused? There is actually a more popular method of scoring; ‘2-4 scoring’ where you win 2 points for beating two players and 4 points for beating all three.

With no draws, betting or bluffing Chinese Poker is more about the luck of the original hole cards, but with a minute to arrange them you can find that the speedier you are the better you are.