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Three Card Poker Topics
Hierarchy of Poker Hands
How to Play 3 Card Poker
3 Card Poker Strategy
3 Card Poker History

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Did you know there are over 2000 casinos currently online? Be warned that not all casinos treat their players fairly. Before you sign up anywhere you need to make sure the casino you choose is licensed in the country it is registered and regulated by a watchdog organization like the IGC. Read my 3 Card Poker Online page to get the details.

3 Card Poker Strategy, Tips and Odds

Ante and Play Strategy
Mastering the game of Three Card Poker requires a fairly simple strategy:

IMPORTANT TIP
In order to achieve the overall payback of 97.98% (House edge of 2.02%) on Ante/Play you must not only follow the strategy above but also make sure you are playing at a casino that uses the following bonus payouts:

Some unscrupulous online casinos that have a lower payback than what is listed above put the odds heavily in their favor. Make sure when you play online you pick a casino that offers Full Payout Three Card Poker. Please note that the above pay table DOES NOT include the original Ante OR Play Bet. You will win the bonus payout even if the dealer does not qualify and even if your hand loses to the dealer.

Ante and Play Analysis
Keep in mind that playing Q-6-4 will return to us only slightly more than half of our bet, but it is still better than folding. In other words, on average we can't expect to win playing Q-6-4 but rather lose less than if we folded. For example:

Out of 3 cards dealt from a 52 card deck, there are a possible 22,100 hands. This leaves the dealer with a 49 card deck and 18,424 three hand combinations.

We know that for every game played we have two choices: Play or Fold. So if we take each hand possible and play them against the 18,424 dealer hands, we can figure out which hands are worth playing. If we folded on every hand we would lose 18,424 coins. However, if we played each hand we would be risking 36,848 coins. From this we can deduce that if a hand gives us a return of at least 18,424 coins, it is worth playing (we are better off than folding). See the chart below for some sample hands.

You can see from the chart that Q-6-4 gives us a better return than folding whereas Q-6-3 does not. Note that any hand with an EV (Expected Value) higher than 1.0 is a winning hand on average. And any hand with an EV higher than .50 is better off being played rather than folded.

Additional 3 Card Poker Ante/Play odds:

• 14,900 of the 22,100 three card hands will end up being played (Q-6-4 or better)
• The breaking point for a hand with an EV greater than 1.0 is an Ace high hand or better.
• 9,500 hands of the 14,900 hands played will have an EV greater than 1.
• You will win the bonus on Ante and Play about 3.7% of the time.

One final word about Three Card Poker strategies: Please don't ever play with a JACK HIGH HAND! It is impossible for the dealer to qualify AND lose to you. The best you could hope for is winning back your original Ante.

Pair Plus Strategy
This part of the game has no strategy since the only decision to make is whether to play at all. It is basically just like a slot machine; bet your money and hope for a pair or better.

IMPORTANT TIP
In order for you to achieve the 97.68% return (House edge of 2.32%) in Pair Plus you must play at a casino that uses the following payout schedule:

*Includes the return of the original bet.

Just as I stated above, online casinos that have a lower payback on Pair Plus than what is listed above have the odds heavily in their favor. Check out the casino at the bottom of the page if you are looking for a good online casino that offers full payout Three Card Poker.

Pair Plus Analysis
There are 22,100 ways to deal three cards in a 52 card deck. If we use a computer program to categorize these hands we get the following:

To calculate payback we multiply the payout times the occurrence of each hand and add them up.

To get the return you divide the total payback by the total number of hands to get 97.68% (House edge of 2.32%).

Additional 3 Card Poker Pair Plus odds:

• 5,660 of 22,100 hands will be a pair or better (winning hands).
• 25.6% of hands will be winners and 74.4% of hands will be losers.
• 66.7% of winning hands will be Pairs.

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