Discount Gambling

At my local Barona Casino, Mississippi Stud is dealt with all player hands face up. I’ve posted many times about the +EV strategy used with this information. No one at the tables plays optimally (i.e., no one listens to me), so the game still retains a huge house edge. In fact, the house edge is probably much higher at Barona, because players tend to play loose on 3rd Street (i.e., “see the first card”, or “always see the first card”) as long as they can see some outs, or some ways to make a hand. These 3rd Street mistakes range from 10% to 50% of the Ante, and are pure house edge. At casinos where players only see their own hand (not allowed to share info), they release losers more quickly, and tend to converge on correct basic strategy.

Of course, the only real advantage to seeing all the players cards is being able to fold early. The other advantage is knowing when to raise draws, but these are fairly rare (e.g., small pairs with all outs remaining on 3rd and 4th Streets, 6 high outs or 5 high suited outs on 3rd Street, certain straight draws on 5th Street). So folding early is the main use of the other player card info.

I wrote a Java calculator for Mississippi Stud when you can see all 6 player hands. It shows you the best decision at each point of the hand. (It’s a huge .jar file and may take some time to load, sorry.) Click on the screenshot below to try it:

The EV numbers tell you the expected value of the hand if you Fold, 1x, or 3x the bet for the next card. The EVs are normalized to the Ante, and a positive EV means an expected profit, and a negative EV means an expected loss. If you’re playing $5 Antes, then multiply these numbers by $5 for the value of the Fold, 1x, and 3x decisions.