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.

Credits $200.00

Dealer

Dealer (best 4 of 6)

You (best 4 of 5)

Set your ante and deal.

Select a chip, then click a betting spot to add it.

Ante reserves enough credits for a 3× Play raise. Aces Up is optional.

Strategy hints

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.

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.

3.40% Ante-Play house edge
(simple strategy; optimal 2.79%)

3.89% Aces Up house edge
(exact, 50-40-8-5-4-3-1 table)

44.3% of hands you fold
(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.