casino games
Three card poker.
Three cards, one decision, and a dealer who needs queen high to be in the hand at all. It is the friendliest looking of the casino games that use poker hands, and it keeps 3.37 percent of every ante you put out. Here is how it works and where that number comes from.
the rules
One decision, and the dealer has to qualify.
You place an ante. You and the dealer each get three cards; yours are face up to you, the dealer's stay down. Then the whole game happens: you either fold, and the ante is gone, or you make a play bet the same size as the ante and the hands are compared.
The dealer needs queen high or better to qualify. If the dealer does not qualify, the ante pays even money and the play bet is returned. If the dealer qualifies and your hand is better, both the ante and the play bet pay even money; if the dealer's hand is better, both are lost. A tie returns everything.
There is usually an ante bonus paid on your own hand regardless of what the dealer has: a straight pays 1 to 1, three of a kind 4 to 1 and a straight flush 5 to 1. And there is normally a separate pair plus bet, which ignores the dealer entirely and simply pays if your three cards contain a pair or better.
the ranking is genuinely different
This is the one real oddity of the game, and it is not arbitrary. A straight beats a flush here, the opposite of every other poker game, because with three cards it is the rarer hand. There are 22,100 possible three card hands, and the counts fall like this.
| Hand | Worked out as | Combinations | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Straight flush | 12 x 4 | 48 | 0.22 % |
| Three of a kind | 13 x 4 | 52 | 0.24 % |
| Straight | 12 x 64 min 48 | 720 | 3.26 % |
| Flush | 4 x 286 min 48 | 1,096 | 4.96 % |
| Pair | 13 x 6 x 48 | 3,744 | 16.94 % |
| High card | the rest | 16,440 | 74.39 % |
The second column is the arithmetic, not a citation: this table is computed when the page is built, and the build fails if the six rows stop adding up to 22,100 or if the straight ever stops being rarer than the flush.
beats here, and would lose to it in every game where you make five cards. The full five card ranking, and how often each hand shows up is the version that applies everywhere else.
the house edge
3.37 percent of every ante, played perfectly.
That is the published figure from the combinatorial analysis at wizardofodds.com, and the important part is the phrase attached to it: it already assumes the player makes the best possible decision every hand. It is not what a careless player loses, it is the floor. Measured against everything you put out during a hand rather than just the ante, the same loss works out to 2.01 percent.
What that means in practice is easier to feel per hundred hands: 3.37 antes, gone, whatever an ante is worth to you. Not on a bad night. On average, including the good ones.
The pair plus bet is a separate question and a worse one. Its edge depends entirely on the pay table printed on the felt, and the published range runs from 2.32 percent up to 7.28 percent for the same looking bet. The version most casinos use sits at 6.75 percent, which is about twice the cost of the main game.
You will not find a strategy section on this page. There is an optimal way to decide between folding and playing, it is published in plenty of other places, and following it perfectly gets you to 3.37 percent and no further. Writing it out here would be an invitation dressed as information. The overview page compares this edge with the other two games, and deciding a limit before you sit down is the one decision here that is genuinely yours.
why this is not poker
Nobody on the other side is deciding anything.
The dealer qualifies or does not according to a rule. He never folds a better hand, never calls with a worse one, never has a bad night, and never adjusts to you. Every part of poker that rewards thought exists because your opponent can be wrong, and here there is no opponent to be wrong. The evidence on whether poker itself is a game of skill turns entirely on that difference, and the Hold'em rules page shows what a hand looks like when both sides can be wrong.
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 three card poker work?
You put up an ante and get three cards, the dealer gets three face down. You then either fold, losing the ante, or make a play bet equal to the ante. The dealer needs queen high or better to qualify. If the dealer does not qualify, the ante pays even money and the play bet pushes. If the dealer qualifies and you have the better hand, both bets pay even money; if not, both lose.
What is the house edge in three card poker?
On the ante and play bet it is 3.37 percent of the ante, or 2.01 percent measured against everything you put out during a hand. That figure is from the combinatorial analysis at wizardofodds.com and it already assumes perfect decisions. The pair plus side bet depends entirely on the pay table: the published range runs from 2.32 to 7.28 percent, with 6.75 percent on the table most casinos use.
Why does a straight beat a flush in three card poker?
Because with three cards it is rarer. Of the 22,100 possible three card hands, 720 are straights and 1,096 are flushes, so the straight is the harder hand to be dealt and ranks above the flush. In five card poker the counts run the other way, which is why the order is reversed there.
Can you win at three card poker in the long run?
No. The edge is fixed by the pay tables and by the rule the dealer follows, so it does not depend on who is playing. Making the mathematically best decision every hand gets you to the published figure and no further. Any long run ends below where it started.
Is three card poker the same game as poker?
It uses poker hands and shares nothing else. There are no opponents, so there is nobody to read, nobody to bluff and nobody making mistakes you can collect. You are up against a fixed rule with a mathematical edge in it, which is the opposite structure to a poker table.