Little Johnny's new game

[Snoogins47]

Sit down my friends, and let me tell a tale.

Here we have Little Johnny Blanksy. He's one of those young wunderkinds, who had built up a nice bankroll, in excess of 4 million.

Now he's down to his last 200 bucks. Amir Vahedi was playing at the ultra-high-stakes dealer's choice table at the Bellagio, and called $5000 ante/min-bet in between the sheets, and after a few orbits, little Johnny was faced with a K 2, and a pot of just over a mil. He knew that all the Ks were accounted for, and thought that he had seen at least one 2 before, and naturally, made the plus EV play of betting the pot. The case 2 comes next, and he's reaching to his pocket after shoving over 3million in checks to the center, which later, of course, went to that bastard Doyle Brunson, whom is widely acknowledged as the best In-Between player alive today.

Not to mention the pot he lost when playing pot limit Baseball, when Daniel Negreanu was trailing on fifth street, then caught four 4s in a row on sixth, to go with his concealed 39, giving him the all but unbeatable six of a kind

Little Johnny needs rent money. And he's friends with all the big boys at the casinos. So, he decides that maybe he can develop a new game, and sell the idea to the casinos for a small profit, at least enough to keep him in food and shelter long enough to rebuild.

Seeing as Johnny doesn't have enough money to afford to gamble with Negative EV (but really, these days, who does?) He wants to make a game similar to blackjack, where with some clever card counting and perfect play, the edge will actually go to the player, but anything shy of perfect play and a strong card counting system will keep feeding money to the casinos. A game where perfect play takes much thought, and some of the decisions are counter-intuitive to the average tourist.

With his hatred for the short term drawouts of hold'em, he decides to invent a game along the lines of hold'em, with a slightly more evened out short-term. However, it can't be just luck: there has to be some sort of play involved. After drowning his sorrows in comped Gin and Tonics from the Bellagio, he falls asleep in a drunken stupor, and dreams up a game. In the dream, it all makes perfect sense, but upon awakening, he's not sure that it's as great an idea as it seemed.

Johnny rushed to the bedside table, and jotted down what he remembered.

Here's what the paper said.

Name: Dropkick Poker (It came in a dream, who actuall expected it to make sense?)

Play: A fixed bet is placed.

Round 1)Two two-card hold'em hands are dealt, face up. The player chooses which hand he wishes to "play." A full board is dealt. If the player's hand wins, he gains 1 point. A loss gives negative one. A split gives nothing. This happens 3 times.

Round 2)The deck is reshuffled, and two five card hands are dealt out, face up. The stronger hand is determined. The weaker hand is given to the player to control. He now has a # of draws (of anywhere from 0 to 5 cards, 0 being a possibility only in the case that he already improved on an earlier draw, or he likes to live dangerously and stand pat on the worst hand) that equals the score he gained on the earlier rounds (meaning that a negative score would make this round impossible to win) and if he improves to beat the initially stronger five card hand, he wins 2 to 1 on his bet.

Johnny likes this new game, and deals out some simulations to himself. In his ultra short run, he discovers a few things.

A)It seems that the player has at least one draw more often than not going into round 2.

B)It seems that the player has the edge, in round two, even with only a single draw.

He also notices some very interesting mechanics in the play of the five card section, not to mention some interesting subtleties that counting cards add to round 1.

Best of all, he notices that had he been playing this game for money, he'd be down, which is what he needs to pitch this idea to the casinos.

Little Johnny wonders if he should alter the mechanics of the game, as he's not sure if the house even has an edge at this point. Some ideas he considered is starting round 1 at a score of -1, adding one deal to the hold'em section, and allowing a player to double his bet at some point (probably after hand 1 of hold'em.)

Little Johnny takes the cocktail napkin he wrote his ideas on, gets some advil for his massive hangover, and wanders down to talk to the owner of the casino about his new development.

Where does Johnny go from here? This is sort of a brain-teaser/logic puzzle type thing, but one where I personally do not have an answer. With computer simulations, it should be fairly easy to figure out an approximate EV of this game, with perfect play. However from my point of view (admittedly, it is the point of view of someone who is far from a math whiz), a precise answer seems very difficult to arrive at.

Little Johnny also hopes that his game doesn't get overshadowed by the new "Hold'em Challenge" game in development by *NAME DELETED* that obviously inspired this Dropkick Poker.

Any questions, comments, or does anybody even want to tackle this one completely and thoroughly?

[SevenStuda]

If Johnny needs a stake, tell him to look me up.

-Dimitri

[Nottom]

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Little Johnny also hopes that his game doesn't get overshadowed by the new "Hold'em Challenge" game in development by *NAME DELETED* that obviously inspired this Dropkick Poker.

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Nottom thinks this game is way to complicated.

[Sully]

Sure seems like a lot of shuffling, dealing, and point counting for one bet.

Just my .02

[mikey checks]

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Little Johnny also hopes that his game doesn't get overshadowed by the new "Hold'em Challenge" game in development by *NAME DELETED* that obviously inspired this Dropkick Poker.

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Nottom thinks this game is way to complicated.

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