| Article ID: | iaor20031521 |
| Country: | United Kingdom |
| Volume: | 51 |
| Issue: | 2 |
| Start Page Number: | 203 |
| End Page Number: | 213 |
| Publication Date: | Apr 2002 |
| Journal: | Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, series D (The Statistician) |
| Authors: | Haigh John |
| Keywords: | game theory |
The game of casino stud poker is described, and the optimal strategy for each hand found. Using this strategy, the player makes an average loss of 0.04845 units per hand, which corresponds to a house edge of 2.36%, when the size of the mean stake is considered. There is no scope for card counting strategies. Appeals to symmetry, and the use of averages over a category of hands, mean that the computations do not rely on a black box computer count, except inescapably on borderline hands.