correct strategy for GUTS!

[bad beetz]

game is guts.

$1 ante for all players. Players get two cards each. All hold cards above table. dealer counts 1-2-3 and all hands drop except those which think they have the best hand (ie. AK best no pair, pairs beat no pair).

winner gets pot. if more than one player held onto his or her cards, they each match the size of the pot for the next hand.

[Glurfle]

For a two player game, play all hands J7 or better. The best the other player can do is tie you on average by playing the same strategy, although he'll come close if he plays every hand.

For the following number of players, you won't lose money playing the following strategies, but I don't guarantee that you'll win as much as is possible. The math isn't quite clear to me, but these are the hands you'd do no worse than break even with. It's possible that you could win more by playing a bit looser, but that may be dependent on your other players.

(This game gets played occasionally at a home game, so I decided to write a short paper on it for a class on games & gambling)

3 - K4
4 - KQ
5 - A3
6 - A6
8 - AT
10 - AQ
15 - 44
20 - 77
26 - 99

[Graham]

So, where's the paper - are we allowed to peek..? [img]/forums/images/icons/confused.gif[/img]

[balkii]

I play this one pretty conservatively, i guess. In the game we play if no one else besides you holds then you have to beat the top two cards off the stock. So my strategy is: keep track of all aces and kings, hold nothing lower than Ax unless all four Aces have shown, then its down to Kx. Every now and then the kings get burned too and you can hold Qx. IF the pot so big that i cant afford to lose, then i only hold pairs. Its like 16 to 1 that someone has a pair, so i never even consider that. if it happens, oh well. Although if a large portion of the deck has been played and there are many Aces, the x part of Ax has to be a little higher. I seem to consistenly win at this game with this strategy.

[Hootie McBoob]

do you shuffle and redeal after each hand -- that's how we play. we also play if a tie, then both players match the pot. i have only seen it once, though. and yeah, i wanna see that paper!!

[Glurfle]

I didn't post the paper because it's really pretty horrendously written. It was pretty much my last priority during a week of a lot of other stuff. But if you really want to see it, it's at http://www.cs.hmc.edu/~ejwu/Guts.htm . I've got some fairly nasty hacked up Matlab code too, if anyone really wants it.

[cferejohn]

Refresh my memory. What happens if everyone drops their cards? I think it was everyone puts some amount (perhaps an ante) into the pot and you do it again.

[Easy E]

[Al_Capone_Junior]

I've played this game many times. It depends how many players are in the hand as to what the best strategy is. Generally, I would call with any ace or pair. Now if there's eight or more players, I'd start being a bit reluctant about playing wimply aces, but would still play any pair. With only four or less players, even decent kings start looking good enough to play.

al