Living in P. T. Barnum's
world
17 May 2004
By Mark Pilarski
Dear Mark,
I recently visited an Indian Casino in Minnesota
that offered 3-card poker. Every player at the
table had to pay 50 cents just to play. I asked
what the 50 cents was for, and was told that it
is the only profit the casino has in 3-card
poker. I find that hard to believe since I do
not know of a casino game that does not have
some kind of house edge. I rather think it's
greed. Any comments other than to stay away. D.B.
In poker, the fifty cent juice per hand is
called the rake; money that the casino charges
for each hand of poker. It is usually a
percentage or flat fee of the pot—in this case
fifty cents from each players hand—after each
round of betting.
Normally, this fee is tolerable in poker because
players do not bet against the house, but
against each other. How else is the casino going
to pay for their employees, playing tables and
neon lights?
However, you were hoodwinked, okay, suckered,
into giving up the additional fifty cents per
hand because 3-card poker DOES have a built-in
casino advantage.
Even if you were to employ a sound betting
strategy like not making the "play" wager unless
your hand consists of at least a queen, six, and
a four in your hand, the house edge on the
"ante" wager is about 2.1%, with the "pair plus"
slightly higher at 2.3%. A bearable casino
advantage, yes, but it does not merit you giving
the casino an additional fifty cents per hand.
Giving them their supplementary fifty cents is
akin to being suckered into making a sucker bet,
which, if you do not know the difference, makes
you the sucker.
Dear Mark,
Aunt Felicia was always going to teach me
Panoochi, a card game that had brought her a
tidy nest egg, but she died before she thought I
was old enough to benefit from the knowledge.
Can you explain the game? Aaron K.
At first, Aaron, I hit a wall finding anything
regarding the card game panoochi, even with
obvious resources like Hoyle, Scarne on Cards or
a internet Google search. So, I went to my
ace-in-the-hole, Area 51's living legend,
Blackjack Jack, who straightaway knew the skinny
on panoochi.
Blackjack Jack, via snail mail (he rightfully
believes his telephone is tapped) informed me
that panoochi is a card game, a friendly scam if
you will, invented way back when by Zeppo Marx
and Benny Rubin, who instead of participating in
general societal uplift, duped those willing to
part with their money with this timekiller card
game.
Panoochi has a vague resemblance to poker, in
that the cards are shuffled, cut and dealt.
Those in on the gag know that there are actually
no rules or method of play, except for the rule
that none of them can admit to the sucker
amongst them that there are no rules. A panoochi
player could do, play or say anything, so long
as it made no sense. By the time their mark
figured it out and wanted to join in on the fun,
his wallet was noticeably lighter.
My first fleece of fortune was against Bob
Orlowski (still the best bottom-of-the-deck
dealer I've ever seen) when he swindled me out
of my Detroit News paper route earnings teaching
me his style of poker. Yours just happened to be
against Auntie F.
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