casino games
Called poker.
Not poker.
Three games use poker hands, carry poker in the name, and are something else entirely. They are played against the house, the house holds a fixed mathematical edge on every hand, and no amount of study reverses it. Here is how each one works, what the edge is, and where the number comes from.
the three, and what they cost
| Game | House edge, per ante | Element of risk | Antes bet per hand | Antes lost per 100 hands |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Three card poker | 3.37 % | 2.01 % | 1.677 | 3.37 |
| Ultimate Texas Hold'em | 2.185 % | 0.526 % | 4.152 | 2.185 |
| Caribbean stud | 5.224 % | 2.555 % | 2.045 | 5.224 |
Every figure in this table comes from the combinatorial analysis published at wizardofodds.com, and every one of them assumes the player makes the mathematically best decision at every point. The last column is the same edge expressed the way it is actually felt: how many antes a hundred hands is expected to cost, whatever an ante is worth to you.
Three card poker
Three cards each, one decision, dealer needs queen high.
The most played of the three, and the one where the hand ranking is genuinely different: with three cards a straight is rarer than a flush, so it beats one.
Ultimate Texas Hold'em
Hold'em against the house, with one raise that shrinks the longer you wait.
The one that looks most like poker and is furthest from it: same cards, same board, no opponents, and a dealer who plays a fixed rule rather than a decision.
Caribbean stud
Five cards each, one card of the dealer showing, raise or fold.
The oldest of the three and the most expensive per hand. The dealer fails to qualify often enough to feel like a break, and that feeling is priced in.
how to read a house edge
Two numbers, and the smaller one flatters.
A house edge is the share of a bet the game expects to keep. It is normally quoted against the ante, because the ante is the one bet you always make. But you rarely stop at the ante: in ultimate texas hold'em the average hand ends with 4.152 antes on the table. The element of risk divides the same expected loss over everything you actually put out, which is why it is always the smaller number and why it is the one an operator prefers to quote.
Both are honest, and neither is optional. The edge per ante tells you what a session costs, because your ante is what you choose. The element of risk tells you how much money is moving through your hands to produce that cost. In all three games these numbers are fixed by the pay tables and the rule the dealer follows, so unlike a winrate they do not depend on who is sitting there.
There is a third number nobody prints, and it is the one that matters most: variance. Any of these games can pay for a good evening. Over a long enough run the edge wins, and the run gets long faster than it feels. Setting a limit before you sit down is the only decision in these games that is genuinely yours.
the actual difference
Poker has no house edge. It has opponents.
In poker the house is not in the hand. It takes a fee for running the game and then steps back, and the money moves between the players at the table. That single structural fact is what makes studying worth anything: your edge comes from the mistakes of the people you are playing, and people make plenty. Against a dealer following a fixed rule there are no mistakes to collect, so there is nothing for study to work on.
It also explains why you cannot bluff in any of these three. Bluffing needs an opponent who can fold, and a dealer cannot: the rule decides. Fold equity, position, reading a range, bet sizing, every part of poker that rewards thought, is missing here because the thing it acts on is missing. Whether poker itself is a game of skill has a page of its own, with the evidence rather than the opinion, and the rules hub covers the variants where the answer is yes.
One honest note about what follows on these pages. Each one explains the rules and the arithmetic, and none of them explains how to play better. That is deliberate. There are optimal decisions in all three, they are published elsewhere, and playing them perfectly gets you exactly to the numbers in the table above and no further. A strategy section here would only be an invitation, and the whole reason these pages exist is the opposite.
next step
If you want to win by getting better, play people and not the house.
That is a different game from the three on this page, and the difference is the entire point: against opponents, getting better changes the result.
questions
Are three card poker, ultimate texas hold em and caribbean stud really poker?
They use poker hands and nothing else from poker. In poker you play against other people, the house takes a fee, and the money moves between players, so being better than the others is what earns. In these three you play against a dealer who follows a fixed rule, the house holds a mathematical edge on every hand, and no amount of skill turns that edge around.
Which of these three has the lowest house edge?
Ultimate texas hold'em, at 2.185 percent of the ante, against 3.37 for three card poker and 5.224 for caribbean stud. All three figures come from the combinatorial analysis published at wizardofodds.com and all three assume the best possible decisions. Lowest is not the same as low: the best of them still expects to take 2.185 antes off you every hundred hands.
Can you beat the house edge in a casino poker game?
No. The edge is built into the pay tables and the dealer rule, so it does not depend on who is playing. Perfect decisions get you to the published number and nothing gets you past it. That is the difference between a game against the house and a game against people: in the second one, the other players decide the outcome, and they make mistakes.
What does house edge actually mean?
It is the share of your bet the game expects to keep, on average, over a long run. The confusing part is that it is usually quoted per ante while you end up betting more than one ante per hand. The element of risk figure divides the same loss over everything you actually put out, which is why it is always the smaller of the two numbers.
Why does this poker site have pages about casino games?
Because thirty thousand people a month look these up, and almost everything written for them is written by somebody who wants them to play. Explaining what the games are, what they cost and why they are not poker in the sense that matters is more useful than pretending they do not exist.