Bit of a silly question...

roryc

Was round in a mates house the other night and after a few games of Pro Ev and a few beers the night veered towards a game of poker... The guy doesn't play poker much but managed to root out some chips and a deck of cards... only problem was there was only 51 cards in the deck

Most of the group wouldn't be too into poker, a few home games every now and then would be the extent of it, and didn't see too much of a problem with it :eek:... Obviously I figured this would make the game entirely different, but not wanting to be the only one giving out about it I just agreed to play ahead with the short deck... Luckily we ended up finding another (full!) deck after a quick search of the house

Anyway, before we found that I was trying to figure out the correct strategy for playing with a card missing (6 of spades). This clearly messes with straight/flush possibilites, among others. So do I try not to go for low end straights as much, spade flushes etc, or just totally ignore the fact that its missing? Then I thought I would be over compensating as it was just the one card...

Not that this issue would (or should) ever arise, just wondering really would missing a single card really effect odds etc enough to totally change your strategy, and also would there be some cards which would make a bigger difference than others if they were missing?

Anyway, as I said, bit of a silly question but meh... bit bored

shoutman

Not totally change your strategy, its just like as if a player always folded a hand face up, if you are on a flush draw instead of there being 11 cards to hit (presuming you hold two spades), there are ten, and thus the odds are slightly lower. I don't think it would effect the game in a huge manner.

KevIRL

definitely means you should fold KK

LuckyLloyd

This post has been deleted.

roryc

KevIRL wrote: »

definitely means you should fold KK

I'll be doing this even if there is an extra King in the deck

Mellor

and knowing would give you some edge.
One time I was playing a game, and after an hour, I commented that 8's were coming up alot, had been a few of 88 flops, and plenty with a bare 8. We soon found out why why I floped a det of 8s, with two 8 of spades.

roryc

Mellor wrote: »

and knowing would give you some edge.
One time I was playing a game, and after an hour, I commented that 8's were coming up alot, had been a few of 88 flops, and plenty with a bare 8. We soon found out why why I floped a det of 8s, with two 8 of spades.

True, I think an extra card in the deck would be more obvious than one missing

fatguy

If the flop comes out 666 and you're holding AA, you're on to a winner.

Would you like some maths on this?

Lets say you're holding 78 and the flop comes out 9 10 X. Your outs for a straight are any J or any 6. Under normal circumstances you'd have 8 outs, with an 8/47 (52 - 3 cards on flop - 2 cards in your hand = 47 cards) chance of getting it on the turn and 8/46 chance on the river. This works out at roughly a 1/3 chance (31.8%).

With a 6 missing it's 7/46 and 7/45. Works out to roughly a 1/3 chance (30.2%). So basically, you're still good.

I can show my work if you want some heavy duty probability.

Lao Lao

Eh, would it not just be a lot easier to keep one of the jokers in the deck and use it as the 6 of spades?

hotspur

Lao Lao wrote: »

Eh, would it not just be a lot easier to keep one of the jokers in the deck and use it as the 6 of spades?

If there's no 6 of spades how likely do you think that there's still jokers? I would have enjoyed being there and seeing Rory's all in preflop KK get cracked by 66. He may have had an opinion on it

Dub13

This situation can come up a lot when a card is accidentally exposed during a hand,as said just play your normal game unless you are drawing to the exposed card (or if you think your opponent is).

Slash/ED

It'd mainly destroy the value of 66 pre flop for set mining, and also give you way more of an indication of where you stand on a 66x board holding something like 56 or something plus some draws being slightly less likely to hit (And some other draws being a tiny bit more likely to hit) but I wouldn't change my strategy apart from that...

me-skywalker

i can speak from experience here... happened over a year ago and ruined poker for us big time only gettign back into it now hence never posting on the poker forum before. we used to play regularly 3times a month big games. now we're not loaded but we decided to have a whopper game an 8man game €100 a head.... no buy ins no top-ups. €600 winner €200 2nd and no settling up.

after much excitment and prep game underway at about 8oclock.. drinks food the lot all sorted... game wen underway to about 3/4 in the morning.. few of the early exits had left and was just 4 of us left at end of game... cleaning up cans food chips and cardc... jsut happened to count the cars when packing them back in as its a nice deck... and counted 51!! straight away was countign them again.. athen the otrs all ahd a go at countign them. then we filtered them out to suites and number order... 3spades missing...

well lets just say there was uproar especially for that amount of money! i personally think it does effect the game hugely!! especially since we didnt know the card was missing and i guess thats the point. bug there's noway u can play with less than 52 its a distinct advantage to unlucky who waiting for the run or the flush they cant get.

DEEP THROAT

Would this mean that 4S 5S 7S 8S 9S would be classed as a straight flush;)

But seriously the most sensible thing would be too take out the other 3 6s and play it with 48 cards. ( Without working it out I doubt if this would change the hand rankings probability wise )