I’ll also be presenting the full Expert Strategy for Four Card Poker today – I’m provided with Shuffle Master for providing respectable basic strategy too. A few days later, I received another email from Paul. He told me that I had nailed down the strategy and payouts. It matched their original analysis.
He then asked if it was okay to use my contact information to their Table Games manager – Roger Snow. It started a professional relationship that has lasted almost 15 years. In that time I’ve analyzed the successful games (and hundreds that didn’t) for Shuffle Master, Bally and Scientific Gaming. All because I wrote a column about Four Card Poker.
As I promised last week, I will also be presenting the full Expert Strategy for Four Card Poker today. This strategy is divided into two parts. The first deal with when to fold vs play 1x. The basic strategy from last week looks to fold anything below the pair’s 3s. The Strategy Expert makes one small change to this. If you have a pair of 2 and the dealer’s up card is a 2 then you don’t fold.
A more significant change in strategy occurs when playing 1x vs 3x. The Basic Strategy is very simple here. If you have a pair of 10 or better you bet 3x. More Expert Strategy is involved, taking into account the cards up to the dealer.
The strategy is as follows:
• 3x bet on all Aces pairs or Better.
• Bet 3x on all pairs except against an Ace and you do not have an Ace in your hand.
• 3x bet on Queens pair except when facing Ace or King unless you have a card over the dealer in your hand.
• 3x bet on the pair of Jacks competing with 2 through Jack. If the dealer has a King or Queen and you have one in your hand (matching rank), keep betting 3x. 1x bet against Ace.
• Bet 3x on pairs of 10 facing 2 to 9. Bet 1x if dealer has Jack through Ace up. If the dealer has 10 ups, and you have the better jack or kicker, bet 3x.
• 3x bet on pair 9 facing 2. 1x bet on all other pairs.
Is it worth learning this more complex strategy? This increases the increase from 98.41 percent to 98.60 percent. That may not sound like much, but turn it around and you change the house threshold from 1.59 percent to 1.4 percent or up about 12 percent.