3-Card Guts strategy?

[Benholio]

Guts rules (http://www.pokertips.org/variants/article/33.php)

Basically: You all get dealt a 3-card hand. Each player decides whether to be 'in' or 'out'. Highest 'in' hand takes the pot, all losing 'in' hands then replace the pot.

Seems like a game where a pretty close to optimal strategy can easily be determined, since you know your entire hand before making any decisions. The only adjustments you would have to make would be for loose/tight players. Anyone ever run across the basic strategy for this?

[timprov]

There's been some discussion of it in Home Poker lately. You may have some luck looking there.

I think if you just play really really tight you should have no trouble.

The only problem with playing tight is the game usually involves beer and then egos become inflated... I play Guts with 2 cards, and by the end of the night once everyones loosened up "any ace will do" if I'm last to act. Hey, it's better than random :P

ahhh but when we play we also play that if you drop what would've been the best hand, you get charged double before the next hand, so playing too tight gets very expensive!

[Burdzthewurd]

Nice, I just started playing this at a home game, good gamb00ling game. For us, though, we play it like Hold'em, so dealer gets to act last, with UTG positions and soforth (no blinds obviously). We're usually 3-6 handed, but image does matter, as I've had guys fold 33-44x in 3-card when I gutted UTG with AKQ or something /images/graemlins/cool.gif

[dibbs]

They have this at ipoker sites now which I found amusing.

[Benholio]

All,

Thanks for the info, I'll check out Home Poker. FWIW, they run this at Tiger Gaming now, is why I was kinda wondering. We used to play this at our home games all the time, but you were only dealt 2 cards and didn't get a third unless you chose to stay in. Seems like that style leaves a lot more room for error for bad players, drawing with bad hands etc.