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Bob Dancer writes a video poker column for beginners to experts. He also writes a column with Jeffrey Compton, "Player's Edge", featuring information on promotions at various Las Vegas casinos. Player's Edge is published each Friday in the Neon section of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Click here to send Bob Dancer an e-mail.

August 26, 2003

An Interesting Way to Break a Tie

In the game Pick'Em Poker (yes, the word Pick'Em officially contains two capital letters), there are many ties. In Pick'Em, you are forced to keep the first two cards you are dealt and your only choice is between two other stacks of three cards each, for which you only see the top card. So on a hand such as 2h 9c / 3d / 4d, you have to decide whether you wish to start your hand with 2h 9c 3d or 2h 9c 4d. Before you rack your brain too hard, let me tell you it's a tie. Mathematically it does not matter whether you hold the 3 or the 4.

To be sure it could happen on this particular deal that there's a pair of threes as the fourth and fifth cards and that you'd score more this particular time if you'd held the 3d rather than the 4d. But since you have to make your choice BEFORE you know what the down cards actually are, on average there's no difference.

In the Dancer / Daily Winner's Guide on this game, we suggested that when there appears to be no difference in which card you hold that you select the higher one. Our logic behind the recommendation was that we wanted to find a rule that would help prevent you from making a silly mistake. The silly mistake we were worried about you committing was forgetting that this is a NINES OR BETTER game. That is, on a hand such as 2h 4s / 8d / 9c, holding the 9 is much better because it's a high card and the 8 is a low card. So our rule was geared toward protecting you IN CASE YOU FORGOT THE GROUND RULES OF THE GAME.

There is probably not a major likelihood of you having such a "senior moment" and forgetting the definition of "high card" while still remembering the rule to select the higher of the two equivalent cards, but hey! It's a tie. ANY edge for one choice over the other, no matter how small, is enough to break a tie.

I recently received an e-mail from a friend in Michigan who told me of his rule for selecting between tie hands. I liked his suggestion and found myself thinking that if he were a GOOD friend, that he'd have sent this to me a month earlier and it would have been mentioned in the Winner's Guide.

My friend "George" says that when he has a choice between apparently equivalent cards that he always picks the one on the RIGHT. So on a hand such as Ac 9h / 5s / 4d, he'd select the 4 rather than the 5.

George wrote, "Most of my playing errors occur when I react to the third card without waiting to see and consider the fourth card. Usually, it doesn't matter. However, I've occasionally slipped by grabbing the low pair when dealt something like 9h 4d / 4c / 9c. I've eliminated that category of error with this rule, which forces me to wait to consider the last card."

I agree with George that this type of mistake is more likely to occur than forgetting whether a 9 is a high card or not, and so I endorse his rule even though it doesn't appear in the Winner's Guide.

Another thing that George's e-mail illustrates is that good players are ALWAYS trying to find ways to improve. I know Pick'Em Poker cold. The Winner's Guide presents the strategy accurately, comprehensively and in a user-friendly manner. And yet even with all that, George's hint will allow me to reduce my already small number of silly mistakes that happen to all of us once in a while. I hope I'll learn another such useful hint soon.