the game of Shoot

[Skuzzy]

While out for a quiet drink at a local establishment, I got into a discussion with the owner about gambling and cards. He was a brag player. We were discussing the propensity of losing players to play badly at the end of the night and specifically about some of the more unsavoury proposition bets that less than honourable gamblers use to exploit this weakness and take what little money these poor hapless chaps had left.

He became suddenly silent and then went a little pale before explaining to me the game of shoot that he and his friends had often played in his youth.

One player (always the same friend from his experience) puts up a pot of say £50. Each player is then dealt three cards with the exception of the dealer. There's a fixed minimum (ante) of 50p. A player can increase the size of his bet on seeing his hand and the dealer has to match the bet up to a maximum of what he has in the pot.

The dealer then turns the top card. The player wins if he has a card of higher value in that suit in his hand. If he has no card of that suit he loses.

The dealer then proceeds onto the next player and repeats the process.

Just thinking in terms of outs for the dealer I came to the conclusion there was a huge overlay in his favour. I made a few quick calculations:

22100 hands

Dealers chances against big hands:

AAA 13/49 26.53% 36:13 2.77

KKK 16/49 32.65% 33:16 2.06

QQQ 19/49 38.78% 30:19 1.58

JJJ 22/49 44.90% 27:22 1.23

TTT 25/49 51.02% 24:25 0.96



AA and any suited card 26/49 53.06% 23:26 0.88
AA3 rainbow 24/49 48.98% 25:24 1.04


Anyway, just curious to know if anyone has seen this played and if anyone can help me calculate the total number of winning versus losing hands. My friend is very keen to know just how badly he was being swindled.