In the past, I’ve written about a game called Four Card Poker. ShuffleMaster also has a similar game that is currently more prevalent than Four Card Poker in Las Vegas and can also be found in the Midwest. It is called Crazy 4 Poker.
In Crazy 4 Poker, the player and the dealer each get five cards to make their best four-card hand. Like many newer games, there are really two separate wagers that can be made. The first is based ONLY on the outcome of the player’s hand and is called queens up. The player wins if he is dealt at least a pair of queens, regardless of what the dealer has. The second wager is like ante/play. To start play, the player makes two equal wagers, the ante and the super bonus. The super bonus is partially tied to the outcome of the showdown with the dealer.
After seeing your five cards, you can either fold, surrender your ante and super bonus bets or you can play, placing an additional wager equal to the ante. If you have a pair of aces or better, you may wager up to three times your original ante as your play bet. After all players have made their decisions, the dealer turns over his cards. The dealer needs at least a king high to qualify. If the dealer does not have at least king high, he pays even money on the play wager and the ante wager pushes. This means that if you had a pair of aces, you will still get paid for your larger play bet instead of your smaller ante. If the dealer has at least a king high, you will be paid even money on your ante and play IF you have a higher hand, or lose both if the dealer has the better hand. The super bonus is a bit more complex. The super bonus pays if the player has a straight or better, regardless of what the dealer has. If the player plays, has less than a straight AND beats the dealer, the super bonus pushes.
In the Midwest, there is essentially only one paytable for queens up. As is common nowadays for these games, the paybacks on the no strategy portion of these games leave a lot to be desired. On the other hand, there is only one paytable in use for the super bonus portion of the game.
Because the Super Bonus is part of the ante/play portion of the game, there is no point in giving a payback on just that aspect of the game. The only thing that matters is the overall payback of the ante/play portion in total, which turns out to be a very respectable 98.91%. To achieve this payback you have to play using proper strategy, which fortunately is rather easy to remember. If you have a K-Q-8 or higher, play. If you have a pair of aces or better, take advantage of the ability to bet three times your ante. You’ll win more than 90% of these hands. It should be noted that K-Q-8 does not represent perfect strategy, but a very, very close easy to remember strategy. Both strategies return 98.91%, with the difference being less than .01%.
In case you are thinking that the strategy mentioned above isn’t worth remembering and that it would be easier to stay in all the time, playing that strategy reduces the payback of the game to about 96.5%. Given that on a $5 table, you’ll wager an average of more than $15 per hand, not including queens up, using this strategy would cost you nearly 50¢ per hand or about $15 per hour.
- Elliot Frome is a 2nd generation gaming author and analyst. Elliot has authored several books including Expert Strategy for Three Card Poker and Expert Strategy for Four Card Poker. Check out Compu-Flyers website at
www.vpheaven.com, or drop an email to
Elliot@vpheaven.com.
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