Mafia Poker: 5 Card No Draw Strategy

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I've had quite a few people ask me to make a post about the basics of poker. I was a little surprised to learn that there are a few Mafia Wars players who don't know how to play poker. I live in Las Vegas so this seems foreign to me. The basics of poker are simple. Each deck contains 52 cards. Thee are 4 suits, spades, hearts, clubs and diamonds.

There are 13 different cards of each suit, 2-10, Jacks, Queens, Kings and Aces. In Mafia Poker Aces are ranked the highest only and do not also count as a low card as they do in most poker games.

There are 10 different types of poker hands in Mafia Poker. The following chart lists hands from highest to lowest rank. Your goal in Mafia Poker is to have a hand that ranks at least one higher than the dealer (Juliana). Examples of each ranked hand are listed below the titles but any of the cards shown above can be used to create one of the ranked hands. You just need to know that straights are in order from lowest to highest and flushes contain any 5 cards of the same suit. Royal and straight flushes have to be in order and contain the same suit. Because Zynga doesn't count Aces as a low card, straight flushes and straights of A-2-3-4-5 do not count. Your actual hand does not need to be in sequential order but all of numbers need to be present. If players have the same hand as their opponent, for example a pair or straight, the winner will be the person with the highest straight or pair.

There are 2,598,960 possible hands you could be dealt. The odds of getting one of the ranked hands shown above are listed below. With the Ace only counting as a high cards, the probabilities of straights and straight flushes are lower than one would expect. If Aces also counted as a low card, there would be 10,200 straight possibilities and 36 straight flushes. This really doesn't matter in Mafia Poker because you get the same number of cards as the dealer and you both have identical chances of winning. You go into each game with a 50% change of winning.

Ranked Hand	Frequency (out of 2,598,960)	Probablility
Royal Flush	4	0.000154%
Straight Flush	32	0.00123%
4 of a Kind	624	0.0240%
Full House	3,744	0.144%
Flush	5,112	0.197%
Straight	9,180	0.353%
Three of a Kind	54,912	2.11%
Two Pair	123,552	4.75%
One Pair	1,098,240 .26%	42.26%
No Pair/High Card	1,303,560	50.16%

There are all different kinds of poker games and each one has it's own rules. Betting is an important part of poker but is not a factor in Mafia Poker so this simplifies things. Mafia Poker is just a simple version of 5 Card Draw. Your strategy should not focus on winning as much as it does Poker Card preservation. When a game begins, you get 5 cards and so does the dealer. Each of you have the same probability of getting one of the hands listed above. Keeping in mind that you want to preserve your Poker Cards, it's not in your best interest to draw any cards. Depending on you  time zone, the number of Poker Cards you can accept for the duration of the event may be different.

Poker Cards Per Game	Gifts Per Day	Event Days	Total Cards	Total Games	Wins Needed	Total Cards Needed	Odds of Winning	Odds Needed
5	250	7	1,750	350	150	750	50%	42.8%

I've been collecting 230 Poker Cards a day because I still collect 20 Artillery Shells for my Family Property. This will allow me to play 322 hands which will be enough to win 150 hands (providing Zynga doesn't mess with the odds). To preserve cards, don't utilize the "Draw" function, just start your game, click "Show" and take your chances. Those who don't understand poker will come out ahead in the long run. 

Ace High is often more than enough to win the hand. It's best to just go for it because you don't waste any cards trying to improve my hand.

I've even won hands with Jack high. Regardless of you hand, you have a 50% chance to win.

There are a few instances when drawing a card may save Poker Cards. In the example below, it's guaranteed I would lose in a show down because Juliana's 10 is higher than any of my cards. Because her two visible cards are pretty low, I drew one card in hopes that it would be a higher than a 10. 

I took this risk because I figured I would use less than 5 Cards to get a hand. I discarded the 2 and the 3. 

I drew a Queen and Nine using 2 Poker instead of 5 for a brand new hand. If Juliana was showing higher cards, I would have just accepted the loss and moved on. Normally I would have stopped with the Queen but I wanted to maximize my odds of winning since I already had 6 cards invested into the had. It was a good thing I did because Juliana had an Ace. When you do draw more than one card, it's important to only discard and draw one at a time. You never know if only one card will help you and then you don't waste a second or third card if it did.

In this example, both Juliana and I have a Jack. The problem here is my other cards are low. In the event of a tie, the next highest card will be used to determine the winner. That card is known as a "kicker" in the poker world. In this case my kicker would be the Ten and it's probably not going to be enough. I also have 4 spades so my odds of making a hand from drawing one card are pretty good.

I discarded the 9 of Clubs and hoped for a higher card or a spade. I got the spade and ended the hand. I burned one to save 5. If I had followed the no draw strategy, I would have lost and wasted 5 cards. In cases where your odds are pretty good to draw one card, you should go for it. 

If it's obvious you are going to lose the hand, your better off accepting the loss. You could end up having to draw more than 5 cards and still lose. In the example below, there is only one more Ace left in the deck and and I can't be sure that she doesn't have a second pair. There are only a few instances when you should ever draw a more cards, this is not one of them. 

If you visit the Mafia Wars Loot Lady Fan Page, you probably saw at least 20 or 30 instances where players who had winning hands lost because only their high card was recognized. I made a post, with many examples, that can be found here. Natalie from the Mafia Wars Gods really had some "Hard Luck"!

The next day, Zynga addressed the issue and blamed on multiple tabs and scripts (1). I don't know if that's always true because some players have encountered it and reported not using any scripts or having multiple windows open. If you aren't using scripts, you might want to head on over to FireFox and make sure Greasemonkey isn't activated. This can cause problems in your game even if you are in a different browser. If you do run into the problem above, it really is "Hard Luck" because Customer Support won't help you.

 Mafia Poker Issues

Hello Mafia Players,

We are aware that some of you are experiencing the following issue:

Mafia Poker Issues
Issue: Some players report that their "Draw" button goes missing. Others report that, even after understanding that we consider the Ace the highest card, not the lowest, they will sometimes lose with a winning hand, such as two pairs vs. the dealer having just one.
Status: We have determined that most, if not all, of these issues are the result of playing Mafia Wars in multiple tabs/windows and/or with scripts. Please try disabling any scripts you may be using and playing the game in only one tab/window at a time. If, after doing this, you still experience any issues with Mafia Poker, please reply to this post with your answers to the following questions so that we may better assist you.
Workaround: Disable scripts and play Mafia Wars in only one tab/window at a time. If you know of another workaround for this issue, please Submit A Workaround.

I've used the strategy outlined above and I have 71 wins. I can accept more cards in about an hour and should not have any trouble getting 150 wins in the next 5 days. I've accepted 230 Poker Cards 3 times now and that comes out to 690 which is 138 games. My win rate is 52.6% which is a little better than it should be. I haven't purchased any Poker Cards and probably won't because Zynga didn't inform us if they event could be repeated. If it can, it will be too late for me to be concerned with getting more Poker Cards. This is a classic example of how doing a bad job of informing players can cost the company some money.

Your success in this event has more to do with how many gifts you can accept than it does in your ability to play or get lucky in poker. The odds are in your favor if you collect the proper number of gifts. It's important to blast poker cards to your mafia everyday to ensure that you get at least 200-250 returned to you ZMC. You can do this the hard way by going to the Poker Card Send Page, clicking the "Select Max" button, clicking the "Send Requests" button, wait for the requests to load and repeat until you run out of mafia members.

You can do it the easy way by using the Gift Blaster by Team Spockholm. Select Poker Cards, load all your mafia (click the FB friends (a) button), and click "Start Sending".

If you do this once a day, you will have a ZMC full of Poker Cards ready to be accepted when your gift accepting timer resets.

Article written by Jennifer Patterson, Creator of the MW Loot Lady Blog, The Mafia Wars Loot Lady Facebook Fan Page and Co-Host of The Informant Podcast. All material is protected by copyright law