in between

[aaronjacobg]

my friends and i are starting to branch off from holdem to other games and i just learned this game in between. Here is how it is played:

There is some type of ante from each player. Two cards are flipped over with space between them. The player to the left of the dealer must then decide whether he wants to make a bet on whether the next card, which is placed in between the first two will be of a rank that is in between the ranks of the first two cards.

A pass can be made at any time with no penalty so if you do not like your odds you can choose to pass to the next player. At this point another two cards are placed on top of the first two and the process repeats.

On your turn you can decide to bet any amount up to the pot limit. If the card falls in between you win the amount that you bet from the pot. If the card is outside you put the amount of the bet into the pot. If the card is the same as the one on either side double the bet is paid.

We play with open wallets so pots get very large. I usually don't like games with so much luck involved but i think with the correct decisions i can play large pots with odds in my favor for most to all of the other players' money. I am trying to figure out what these decisions should be and how selective i should be. Help would be greatly appreciated.

btw, i just realized how killer card counting would be in this game but i would have to figure out a method. This would help too.

Thanks,

Jake

[Porcupine]

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A pass can be made at any time with no penalty

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You need to play with a minimum bet. Helps build the pot and keeps people from passing until they get cards with a big spread.

[DrPublo]

The game is called acey ducey. I played it a lot in high school, usually 8 ppl with 50 cent antes. We also played open wallets but because the pot sometimes got huge and we were broke (and in high school) we put a $50 cap on any loss (meaning the most you could bet was $25 even if the pot was larger).

The games a lot of fun, things can get crazy with a few unlikely losses in a row. Nothings worse than when the outside cards are A - A, you yell "pot low!" thinking its easy money and then the card comes with an A and you owe double.

The way to make money at the game is to pass up all bets until you have an edge. It's tempting, but spreads like K-6 are not going to make you money in the long run.
Consider the math:

Say we have an x card spread and we bet y. Now, ASSUMING WE HAVE ONLY SEEN THE TOP TWO CARDS OF THE DECK*, the math works like this. There are 4*x winners where we win y, 6 losers where we lose 2*y, and the rest (50-4*x-6) where we lose y. We want to find x such that

4*x*y - 6*2*y - (50 - 4*x - 6)*y > 0

Do a litle algebra and it turns out

(8*x - 56)*y > 0 --> x > 7 for some positive bet y .

So you're looking for spreads greater than 7, ie at least 8. These are A-5 and better, K-4 and better, Q-3 and better and J-2. Betting any amount on these spreads is +EV. The problem is only betting on these spreads, its often tempting to bet at a relatively (but not sufficiently) large spread to try and recover some lost money if you just got bad beat out of a big pot.

The Doc

* Of course, you have seen cards out of the deck, so you should adjust accordingly. If you can count a deck down in your head, that would be ideal. But many people can't. So it's probably sufficient to count A's, K's, 2's and 3's and if you've seen a lot of these late in the deck you can start to gamble on spreaks like Q-4. Other people can come up with better counting schemes, I'm sure.

[Snoogins47]

I remember in some of my boredom at work I cooked up a very half-assed point-count system for this game, but I have no idea where it ended up. I wanted to continue to develop it, but then I realized that I haven't played In Between the Sheets (that's what we call it in these parts) in years, and don't plan on it again.

It's a cakewalk to figure out when a pot bet would be +EV. The interesting question is what sort of selection of players would you need to make the entire play of the game +EV for a "good" player? I never thought particularly hard about it, but it's a bit of a mind-bender for me. At first glance, opponents making mistakes wouldn't seem to help you. However, the pot size in relation to the minimum bet has a huge effect on your expectation, as you're basically just going to be taking tiny -EV situations until you get an exploitable edge. People playing sub-optimally would increase the average pot size, which I assume would make your Real$ +EV higher for the entire course of a game than a group of players playing optimally.

The other real mindbender... if you were in a "juicy" game, what sort of ridiculous bankroll compared to the ante would you need? I'm assuming the bankroll would have to be absolutely massive to provide for maximum +EV, as up to a certain point, there will be situations where the optimum bet for bankroll growth will be sacrificing expectation.

Of course, aside from the antes, the other major factor in determining a bankroll is the average amount of money your friends carry in their wallets.

On a semi-related note, a few years back our home games would have the occasional game of In Between. We played with open wallets as well. On one night, I was sadly absent, but the remaining five players played In Between/Acey Deucey.

They lost.

[DrPublo]

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The interesting question is what sort of selection of players would you need to make the entire play of the game +EV for a "good" player?

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That's easy! Gamblers, plain and simple. The type that don't think to figure out how big a spread you need to make a +EV bet, and the type that are too afraid to bet the whole pot on any +EV proposition because they fear the (unlikely) circumstance of having to pay double.

You're right in the sense that the game is making a whole lot of -EV bets waiting for times when you have an exploitable +EV edge. But I think you also make money when your opponents don't take full advantage of their +EV situations and bet less than the pot, as this leaves the pot bigger for you if you happen to catch a good spread on your turn.

The Doc