Three Card Brag or its close variant Three Card Poker are not the most popular casino games, other versions of poker such as Texas Hold’em are currently the most popular, it still remains a great game and has a number of elements of which a skilled player can make advantage.

Three Card Brag is a very fast moving game compared to other forms of poker and it has a vulnerability that can be exploited due to the various shuffling rules.

The game begins with dealing tree cards to every player. It is possible to play blind (to bet without looking at your cards) or to look at your cards before betting. When a player bets blind, he contributes to the pot only half of the current bet.

Rounds of betting continue until only two players remain, the rest having folded their cards, and the hand comes to an end when one player “sees” another by placing in the pot an amount equivalent to twice the last bet. The highest ranked hand wins the total pot. Hands are ranked in a similar manner to poker hands though a run beats a flush.

When the hand is over all the cards are collected, placed at the bottom of the deck, and the next hand is dealt without shuffling. The deck is shuffled only when a player gets a prial (three cards of the same value).

If a player wins without looking at his cards, which happens when he is blind and all the other players fold, he can chose to keep his cards for the next round.

There are several ways in which the game’s vulnerabilities can be exploited. The first is accurate card counting, which is easy to do with a little practice. As you know how precisely how many cards will be dealt you can predict when any specific card you have spotted on the discard pile will appear.

It is also possible to sequence the cards in hour hand before you discard them which gives you some control of the deal. It is not difficult to set yourself up with a pair and then play it blind.

There was a famous depiction of a rigged game of Three Card Brag in the British movie directed by Guy Ritchie called “Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels”. During the game the character Eddy lost half a million pounds to the gangster Harry Lonsdale.

Of course none of this applies to online casinos as the cards are electronically shuffled each round.