casino games
Caribbean stud.
Five cards each, one of the dealer's turned face up, and a single choice: fold or double up. It is the oldest of the casino games built on poker hands and the most expensive per hand. Here is how it works and what the 5.224 percent is made of.
the rules
You place an ante and both you and the dealer get five cards. One of the dealer's is face up, which is the only information you ever get about the hand you are up against. Then the single decision: fold and lose the ante, or raise by exactly twice the ante. There is no middle size and no second chance.
The dealer needs ace king or better to qualify. If he does not, the ante pays even money and the raise comes straight back. That sounds like a break and it is the opposite: the raise is two thirds of the money you put out that hand, and when the dealer misses, all of it does nothing. Winning a hand you would have won big becomes winning one ante.
If the dealer does qualify and your hand is better, the ante pays even money and the raise pays on the table below. Lose and both go. A tie returns everything.
what the raise pays, when the dealer qualifies
| Your hand | Raise pays |
|---|---|
| Royal flush | 100 to 1 |
| Straight flush | 50 to 1 |
| Four of a kind | 20 to 1 |
| Full house | 7 to 1 |
| Flush | 5 to 1 |
| Straight | 4 to 1 |
| Three of a kind | 3 to 1 |
| Two pair | 2 to 1 |
| Pair or less | 1 to 1 |
Most tables also cap the total payout per hand, which matters only on the rows almost nobody ever reaches.
the house edge
5.224 percent of every ante, played perfectly.
The figure comes from the combinatorial analysis at wizardofodds.com, and as always the attached phrase is the important one: it assumes the mathematically best fold or raise decision every hand. Over a hundred hands that is 5.224 antes gone on average, which makes this the most expensive of the three games on this site by a clear margin.
Measured against everything you actually put out it is 2.555 percent, because the average hand ends with 2.045 antes on the table. The gap between 5.224 and 2.555 is worth sitting with, because it is the qualification rule in numeric form: you are risking roughly twice your ante per hand while a large share of the hands are settled as though you had only put out the ante.
There is normally a progressive side bet as well, paid on your own five cards. Its edge moves with the size of the jackpot, and we have not confirmed a figure for it at a source, so there is none on this page. What can be said without a number is that it is a separate bet, outside the 5.224 percent above, and that it does not change the arithmetic of the main game in your favour.
As on the other pages here, there is no strategy section. An optimal fold and raise rule exists and is published in plenty of other places, and playing it flawlessly is exactly what the 5.224 percent already assumes. The overview page puts all three edges side by side, and the cheapest of them still expects to win.
why this is not poker
Five card stud without the other players.
The name points at a real poker game, and the deal is roughly that game's shape. Stud is still played, and there the up cards are worth studying because the people holding them are making decisions. Here the up card belongs to a dealer who has none to make: he qualifies or he does not, by rule.
That is why nothing transfers. You cannot bluff a rule, you cannot take a pot nobody is contesting, and there is no opponent whose mistakes fund your winnings. The case for poker being a game of skill rests entirely on those mistakes existing, and the responsible play pages are the honest companion to any game where they do not.
next step
If you want to win by getting better, play people and not the house.
A different game from this one, and the difference is the whole point: against opponents, getting better changes the result.
questions
How does caribbean stud poker work?
You place an ante and get five cards. The dealer gets five as well, with one of them face up. You then either fold, losing the ante, or raise by exactly twice the ante. The dealer needs ace king or better to qualify. If he does not qualify, the ante pays even money and the raise is returned. If he qualifies and you have the better hand, the ante pays even money and the raise pays on a fixed table.
What is the house edge in caribbean stud poker?
5.224 percent of the ante, or 2.555 percent measured against everything you put out during a hand. Both figures come from the combinatorial analysis at wizardofodds.com and both assume perfect decisions. It is the most expensive of the three casino games that use poker hands, roughly one and a half times the cost of three card poker per ante.
What does the dealer need to qualify?
Ace king or better. The lowest hand that qualifies is ace king four three two; the highest that does not is ace queen jack ten nine. It fails to qualify often, and that is not the gift it looks like: when it happens your raise, which is twice the size of your ante, simply comes back to you rather than winning anything.
Can you beat caribbean stud in the long run?
No. The edge sits in the pay table and in the qualification rule, so it does not depend on who is playing. Making the mathematically best fold or raise decision every hand reaches the published figure and nothing goes past it.
Is the progressive side bet worth taking?
It is a separate bet with its own house edge, and that edge moves with the size of the jackpot, so a single honest number for it does not exist. We have not confirmed a figure for the version you are likely to meet, so this page does not give one. What is certain is that it is not included in the house edge of the main game.