Set your ante and deal.
Free game, fun credits only ā no real money. Every bet (ante included) pays the final hand; a pair of 6sā10s pushes. Optimal play folds ~44% of hands ā the hints show the exact call.
The dashed gold line is the exact per-ante house edge, 4.91%, from the full ~156M-state derivation ā the sim only validates it. Swings here are the wildest of our carnival games: winning hands routinely have 4ā10 antes riding, and the 500:1 royal pays on all of them. Watch how often the line spends time far from its destination ā that's 1.37% per dollar wagered doing its work across 3.59 antes a hand.
Mississippi Stud is the highest-stakes carnival game on the site: you make three separate raise-or-fold calls, and by the river an average hand has 3.59 antes in the pot ā all of it paying (or losing) at the same odds. There's no dealer, so the whole game is solvable: every figure below is exact, from a full 3-street backward induction over ~156 million states.
(per ante, exact)
(per dollar actually bet)
under optimal play
The paytable and the exact final-hand odds
Every wager ā the ante and all three street bets ā pays these odds on the final 5-card hand. The middle tier is the game's signature: a pair of 6s through 10s pushes (you get everything back but win nothing).
| Final hand | Pays (every bet) | Probability |
|---|---|---|
| Royal flush | 500 to 1 | 0.0002% |
| Straight flush | 100 to 1 | 0.0014% |
| Four of a kind | 40 to 1 | 0.0240% |
| Full house | 10 to 1 | 0.1441% |
| Flush | 6 to 1 | 0.1965% |
| Straight | 4 to 1 | 0.3925% |
| Three of a kind | 3 to 1 | 2.11% |
| Two pair | 2 to 1 | 4.75% |
| Pair, jacks or better | 1 to 1 | 13.00% |
| Pair, 6sā10s | PUSH | 16.25% |
| Everything else | all bets lose | 63.12% |
The exact 3rd-street strategy (derived, not memorized)
- Raise 3Ć with any pair ā even a pair of deuces (it can only improve, and trips pay 3:1 on an ever-growing pot).
- Raise 1Ć with any jack or better, or two cards 6+ (two chances at a paying or pushing pair).
- Raise 1Ć with 6-5 suited ā the famous exception; the straight-flush potential just barely clears the bar. 6-5 offsuit folds.
- Fold everything else ā that's a full 44% of hands, gone for one ante. Chasing with a low hand feeds three streets of bad bets.
Our derivation computes the optimal call at every state from scratch ā and it lands exactly on the published expert strategy, 6-5-suited quirk included. On 4th and 5th street the simulator computes the exact EV live rather than using rules at all.
Why two very different edge numbers
The 4.91% headline is your expected loss measured against one ante ā the highest of our carnival games. But Mississippi Stud escalates: with 3.59 antes wagered on an average hand, the cost per dollar actually bet is just 1.37% ā one of the lowest on the floor. Both are true. What they mean together: the game is fairly priced per dollar, but it makes you put a lot of dollars in ā expect big swings relative to your ante.
The exact odds of Mississippi Stud ā 4.91% per ante, 1.37% of total action, every figure computed. Fun credits only, no real money.
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