Hi everyone, just want to share my trick to making tons of caps and ammo at low levels without even stepping into Vegas. The secret is ... Caravan!

1) First you need to get a set of caravan cards from Ringo in Goodsprings.
2) Next you need to be able to get to the three key merchants who play caravan, namely Lacey in Mojave Outpost, Johnson Nash in Primm and Cliff Briscoe in Novac.
3) Procceed to one of the three merchants, Cliff Briscoe, Johnson Nash or Lacey in that order if possible.
4) At each merchant, Buy every single item in his or her shop! Just remember to make sure you have atleast 3000 caps left to bet with him or her.
5) Challeage the merchant to Caravan and win back your caps. They will bet up to a half of their total caps per game! High barter increases the amount you can get them to raise with you.
6) Resell some of the stuff back to them once the payouts for each game gets too low. (ie <500 caps)
7) Travel and repeat the same each of the merchants making sure you can carry all the stuff. Drop off your excess stuff in Goodsprings if you are getting over loaded. Use the mail box in Johnson Nash's shop to send to Goodsprings. Sometimes if you are lucky the traveling merchant will be visiting Mojave Outpost. Long Haul is extremely good for this.
8) Sell all the excess stuff you have to Chet in Goodsprings.
9) The merchants restock every week so be sure to visit them weekly!

Winnings to Date: 274683
Losses to Date: 0
Win/Loss Totals: 216/0
Biggest Ante Pot Won: 11512

Caravan Deck, 30 cards, only spade or hearts (working to make pure spade deck)
6's x 4
7's x 4
8's x 5
9's x 5
10's x 5
Kings x 7

Best part: C4 x 52

Thats called an exploit. You could make it easier and use the console to get lots of caps

It is an intented feature of the game, i just like to do things efficiently. Whether it is unbalanced or not is up to debate. Nevertheless i have no qualms with "exploiting" an ingame feature. Besides PS3 users and XBox users dont have console/mods/trainers so this should be useful in letting them quickly purchase all the implants.

Why sell some stuff back to them (unless you're looking to clean them out completely by not playing even more games)? Why not just take that loot to a non caravan playing vendor and sell it there?

Edit: Thank you. I was looking for a list of caravan playing vendors the other day and someone just linked me to a page that lists caravan playing people. Glad to know the vendors that do it. Do any of them repair items?

Caravan seems broken for me; after 2-3 cards I lose the ability to play new cards, and can only discard...

Are you using the controls to move up/down as well as left-right? The only time you can play a new card on an existing bid is if it's a face card. If it's a number card, you have to move down to play it.

If you're moving down already and you can't play, don't forget that each bid has a direction (ascending/descending). So if you play a 6 and then a 4, you can't play a 5 because your caravan bid is descending. The exception to this is if your 5 is the same suit as your 4. You can also play a queen on the 4 to change your caravan bid from descending to ascending.

Fixed A deck of cards has 4 colours. A suit is either the whole deck or something else

Perhaps where you're at. A standard deck of cards in the US has 4 suits (Hearts, Spades, Diamonds, Clubs) and 2 colors (colours): red for Hearts and Diamonds, and black for Spades and Clubs.

The best carvan deck is nothing but 7's 9's and 10's. Guaranteed to win if you play you hand right.

I think it's a matter of opinion. 8K10, and 89K also give 26. So 8-10 & kings (plus Jacks and jokers helps.)

Then again, playing the AI in game, 7,9,10 would work. With 8-10 and king though you don't have to worry about starting with either 7's or 10's and hoping your opening hand isn't a glut of 9's.

1) It is a lot harder to complete single suit when you limit the numbers to 7,9,10. Single suit decks effectively makes you immune to the numerical order rule. If they ever upgrade the AI to use face cards on you, this will also make you immune to queens.
2) Kings are the best to break stalemates by overloading the opponent's caravan. Jacks don't work quite as well compared to Kings. When you overload their caravan with a King, they will have to discard the whole caravan unless they happen to have jacks.

Or you could just go to the Vikki and Vance Casino, buy some chips, cash them in and because they stay in your inventory after you have cashed them in, you can keep on cashing them as often as you like. I went there with less than 500 caps, kept buying ang cashing in until I had 10000 chips and all I have to do when I want more caps is go back and get 10k at a time. If the cashier is too stupid to realise, its not my problem lol

Those are the colours. Clovers, Spades, Diamonds and Hearts. You can make the suit in caravan go any direction you like if you have the same colour on the cards. Like 4 3 6 7 8 3 is possible. Clover 4 then Diamonds 3 and 6. Spades 7. Hearts 8 and 3.

i think my caravan does not work (pc)
whenever i play a game ill get like one card out than have to discard my whole deck...pretty stupid if you ask me. so i have given up on figuring the game out. Can anyone help?

Use the arrow keys to move up,down,left, right.

Diamonds and Hearts are the same color, you're trying to say they are different colors?

Nothing personal, but being that the game is set in America, I'm American, and I'm stubborn as well, I'll stick with my description:

Suits = Clubs, Spades, Diamonds, Hearts
Color = Red/Black
Bid = one each of the 3 piles each player has.

Yes the actual colours are red and black but hearts, clovers, diamonds and spades are called colours. Never heard them being called a suit before.

In america they're called suits.

From dictionary.reference.com:

Definition 7 relating to cards:
"a.
one of the four sets or classes (spades, hearts, diamonds, and clubs) into which a common deck of playing cards is divided.
b.
the aggregate of cards belonging to one of these sets held in a player's hand at one time: Spades were his long suit.
c.
one of various sets or classes into which less common decks of cards are divided, as lances, hammers, etc., found in certain decks formerly used or used in fortune telling.
"

From wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Card_suit)

In playing cards, a suit is one of several categories into which the cards of a deck are divided. Most often, each card bears one of several symbols showing to which suit it belongs; the suit may alternatively or in addition be indicated by the color printed on the card. Most card decks also have a rank for each card, and may include special cards in the deck that belong to no suit, often called jokers.

Kay. Still calling 'em colours though

Understandable. Seeing how the game's set in America, and I'm stubborn, I'll use the American terms for them.

I found Caravan time consuming, in fact, the whole process of this is time consuming......

I only have 12 Barter and I still make decent amount of caps just snooping around; maybe when I am at 3rd playthrought and I wanna spam 50cal.

I tried this and it didn't work. When I exchanged the chips for cash they were taken out of my inventory. Was there an update or something that fixed this?

Being nitpicky myself, the game is set in Nevada, which is in the USA in North America. America is a perty big continent you know.

True, but while we're being nitpicky, I specified "America" which is short hand for the United States of America (to us lazy Americans, lol).... because technically America is 2 continents... North America and South America.