Games · Four Card Poker
Four Card Poker: one more card, one more decision
Three Card Poker's bigger sibling: five cards to make your best four-card hand, against a dealer who builds theirs from six. No qualifying, and ties go to you — sounds generous, until you feel what that sixth dealer card does. One simple rule plays it well: raise 3× with a pair of tens or better, 1× with any lower pair, fold without a pair — a 3.40% ante edge. Then meet Aces Up, the side bet that pays 50:1 and quietly costs more than the game.
Set your ante and deal.
Your call: fold, or raise a Play bet of 1× or 3× your ante?
Free game, fun credits only — no real money. Simple strategy: raise 3× with a pair of tens or better, 1× with a lower pair, fold without a pair.
The dashed gold line is the published simple-strategy house edge, 3.40% of the ante. Four Card Poker swings harder than most table games — 3× raises plus a 25:1 Ante Bonus make for a bumpy ride, so convergence takes longer than in our other Labs. For contrast: expert play using the dealer's up card reaches 2.79%, and the Aces Up side bet costs 3.89% (that one is exact).
Four Card Poker is Three Card Poker's bigger sibling: you make your best four-card hand from five cards, the dealer makes theirs from six — and there's no qualifying, no pushes on ties (ties go to you). The Aces Up figures below are exact (all 2,598,960 hands enumerated); the Ante-Play edge is the published figure for the simple strategy, verified by Monte-Carlo in the Lab.
(simple strategy; optimal 2.79%)
(exact, 50-40-8-5-4-3-1 table)
(every no-pair hand)
What each bet really costs
| Bet | House edge | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| Ante-Play (simple strategy) | 3.40% | The main game — element of risk just 1.56% |
| Ante-Play (optimal, uses the dealer's up card) | 2.79% | The ceiling — expert play squeezes out a bit more |
| Aces Up side bet | 3.89% | Fun, but a pricier bet than the game itself |
Your best 4 cards from 5 — the exact frequencies
Two quirks of four-card rankings: three of a kind beats a flush, and a flush beats a straight — with four cards, trips are far rarer. And on the Aces Up bet, only a pair of aces pays; any lower pair loses.
| Best 4-card hand | # of 2,598,960 | Probability | Aces Up pays |
|---|---|---|---|
| Four of a kind | 624 | 0.024% | 50 to 1 |
| Straight flush | 2,072 | 0.080% | 40 to 1 |
| Three of a kind | 58,656 | 2.257% | 8 to 1 |
| Flush | 114,616 | 4.410% | 5 to 1 |
| Straight | 101,808 | 3.917% | 4 to 1 |
| Two pair | 123,552 | 4.754% | 3 to 1 |
| Pair of aces | 81,096 | 3.120% | 1 to 1 |
| Pair, 2s–Ks | 966,456 | 37.19% | loses |
| High card | 1,150,080 | 44.25% | loses |
The whole strategy (the simple version)
- Raise 3× with a pair of tens or better (or anything stronger — two pair and up).
- Raise 1× with a pair of twos through nines.
- Fold everything without a pair. That's 44.3% of hands — the dealer's six cards are just too big an advantage to fight with high card.
- This simple rule gives the 3.40% edge. Experts who also read the dealer's exposed card can reach 2.79% — a real but modest improvement.
- The Ante Bonus pays on your ante no matter what the dealer has: three of a kind 2:1, a straight flush 20:1, four of a kind 25:1.
Why there's no dealer qualifying — and why ties go to you
Unlike Three Card Poker, the dealer always plays, and any tie goes to the player. Sounds generous — but the dealer builds from six cards to your five, which is a much bigger edge than those concessions give back. That asymmetry is where the 3.40% lives.
How this simulation works
- Rules modeled
- Standard Four Card Poker, single 52-card deck, independent hands. The player antes and receives 5 cards; the dealer receives 6 (one exposed). The player folds (forfeiting the ante) or raises a Play bet of 1× to 3× the ante. Both sides make their best FOUR-card poker hand (ranking: four of a kind > straight flush > three of a kind > flush > straight > two pair > pair > high card; ace high or low in straights). There is no dealer qualifier; the higher hand wins even money on Ante and Play, and ties go to the player. The Ante Bonus pays on the ante regardless of the dealer — three of a kind 2:1, straight flush 20:1, four of a kind 25:1. The optional Aces Up side bet pays on the player's own best 4-card hand (pair of aces or better; 50-40-8-5-4-3-1 table). Stakes are fun credits in integer cents.
- Assumptions
- Hands are independent (a freshly shuffled deck each round). The simulator plays the published SIMPLE strategy — raise 3× with a pair of tens or better, 1× with a pair of twos through nines, fold otherwise — which ignores the dealer's exposed card. Expert play that uses the up card reaches a slightly lower edge (shown in the Odds tab). Fun credits only, no real money.
- Mathematical basis
- The Aces Up side bet and the hand-frequency table are EXACT — enumerated over all C(52,5)=2,598,960 best-4-of-5 hands (edge 3.89% on the 50-40-8-5-4-3-1 table), and the fold/1×/3× play distribution is exact from the same enumeration. The Ante-Play house edge cannot be exactly enumerated (the joint player×dealer space is ~10¹³ deals), so the engine carries the published Wizard-of-Odds figures — 3.40% of the ante for the simple strategy (2.79% optimal) — verified by seeded Monte-Carlo convergence in the Lab. The exact and published figures are labeled as such throughout.
- Engine version
- four-card-poker engine 1.0
- Validation
- 15 unit tests + an opt-in slow test — the 4-card evaluator across all categories including the trips-beat-flush and flush-beats-straight quirks and the A-2-3-4 wheel; best-4-of-5 and best-4-of-6 selection; the simple-strategy thresholds; the exact Aces Up counts (624 quads / 2,072 straight flushes / 81,096 ace pairs of 2,598,960) and its 3.89% published edge to 4dp; the Ante Bonus schedule; seeded determinism; and a 500,000-hand convergence toward the published 3.40%. The slow test re-runs the full 2.6M enumeration and must reproduce the frozen counts exactly.
- Last reviewed
- Verified by exact enumeration where the math allows (Aces Up + frequencies + play distribution) and against the published Wizard-of-Odds figures where it doesn't (Ante-Play, MC-converged). Building this engine also uncovered and fixed a systematic Monte-Carlo bias (per-hand RNG re-seeding) — validated against Three Card Poker's exactly-known edge. Last reviewed 2026-07-13.