Games · Three Card Poker
Three Card Poker: one rule, done right
The fastest poker game in the casino — three cards, one decision — and it rewards knowing exactly one rule. Deal a funded balance and make the call the pros make: play any hand of Queen-6-4 or better, fold the rest. Get it right and the house keeps just 3.37% of your ante. Then meet Pair Plus, the flashy side bet that pays 40:1 — and quietly costs you more. See both, exactly, in the Odds tab.
Set your ante and deal.
Your call: raise the Play bet (equal to your ante) or fold?
Free game, fun credits only — no real money. Optimal play: raise on Q-6-4 or better, fold otherwise. Pair Plus is a higher-edge side bet.
The dashed gold line is the exact Ante-Play house edge, 3.37%, under perfect Q-6-4 strategy. Short runs swing wildly; the more hands you play, the tighter the observed edge hugs it — a long-run certainty, not a per-hand one. For contrast, the Pair Plus side bet runs at 7.28%.
Three Card Poker is two bets in one. The Ante-Play game is a genuine strategy bet — play correctly and the house keeps just 3.37% of your ante. The Pair Plus side bet is a pure payout gamble on your own three cards. Every figure below is exact — Pair Plus enumerated over all 22,100 hands, Ante-Play over the full deal space.
(element of risk 2.01%)
(1-3-6-30-40 paytable)
playing (Q-6-4+)
What each bet really costs
| Bet | House edge | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| Ante-Play (correct strategy) | 3.37% | The bet to make — element of risk just 2.01% |
| Pair Plus (1-3-6-30-40) | 7.28% | Fun, but ~2× the Ante-Play edge — a side bet, not a strategy |
The exact hand frequencies (of 22,100 hands)
Notice the quirk: a straight beats a flush here — with only three cards, a straight (720 hands) is rarer than a flush (1,096), so it outranks it. That's the reverse of five-card poker.
| Hand | # of hands | Probability | Pair Plus pays |
|---|---|---|---|
| Straight flush | 48 | 0.217% | 40 to 1 |
| Three of a kind | 52 | 0.235% | 30 to 1 |
| Straight | 720 | 3.258% | 6 to 1 |
| Flush | 1,096 | 4.959% | 3 to 1 |
| Pair | 3,744 | 16.94% | 1 to 1 |
| High card | 16,440 | 74.39% | — |
The whole strategy: "Queen-Six-Four"
- Play any hand of Q-6-4 or better; fold everything worse. That single rule is optimal — it gets the Ante-Play edge down to 3.37%. You'll play about 67% of hands.
- The dealer needs Queen-high to "qualify." If the dealer doesn't, your Ante pays 1:1 and your Play bet pushes — a small gift that's already baked into the 3.37%.
- The Ante Bonus pays no matter what (even if the dealer beats you): a straight pays 1:1, three of a kind 4:1, a straight flush 5:1.
Is Pair Plus worth it?
It's the fun bet — one big hand pays 30:1 or 40:1 — but the edge depends entirely on the paytable, and casinos quietly shift it. The common Pair Plus (1-3-6-30-40) keeps 7.28%; the older, better Pair Plus (1-4-6-30-40) (flush pays 4) is only 2.32%. Always check what the flush pays.
| Pair Plus paytable | House edge |
|---|---|
| Pair Plus (1-3-6-30-40) (flush pays 3) | 7.28% |
| Pair Plus (1-4-6-30-40) (flush pays 4) | 2.32% |
How this simulation works
- Rules modeled
- Standard Three Card Poker, single 52-card deck, independent hands. The player antes and gets 3 cards, then either raises a Play bet equal to the ante or folds (forfeiting the ante). The dealer's 3 cards then show; the dealer 'qualifies' with Queen-high or better. If the dealer doesn't qualify, the Ante pays 1:1 and the Play bet pushes; if the dealer qualifies, the higher 3-card hand wins even money on both Ante and Play (a tie pushes). 3-card ranking, best to worst: straight flush, three of a kind, straight, flush, pair, high card (a straight beats a flush). The Ante Bonus pays on the ante regardless of the dealer — straight 1:1, three of a kind 4:1, straight flush 5:1. The optional Pair Plus side bet pays on the player's own 3 cards (default 1-3-6-30-40). Stakes are fun credits in integer cents.
- Assumptions
- Hands are independent (a freshly shuffled deck each round). Ace plays high or low in straights (A-K-Q high, A-2-3 low). Optimal strategy is to Play on Queen-6-4 or better and fold otherwise. This models the common US rules with the standard 1-4-5 Ante Bonus; Pair Plus paytables vary by casino (two are shown in the Odds tab). Fun credits only, no real money.
- Mathematical basis
- Every figure is exact, not simulated. Pair Plus is enumerated over all C(52,3)=22,100 hands; the Ante-Play house edge (3.37% per ante, 2.01% element of risk, 67.4% play rate) is computed over the full joint deal space C(52,3)·C(49,3) ≈ 407 million outcomes under optimal Q-6-4 play. The Play and Lab draw from the same engine; the Lab's Monte-Carlo only validates the exact edges, never redefines them.
- Engine version
- three-card-poker engine 1.0
- Validation
- Unit tests — the hand evaluator across all six categories including the wheel (A-2-3) and the straight-beats-flush rule; the dealer-qualify (Queen-high) and optimal-play (Queen-6-4) thresholds; the exact Pair Plus category counts (48/52/720/1096/3744/16440) and house edges vs the published figures (7.28% / 2.32%); the Ante-Play mechanic (dealer qualify, Ante Bonus paid even on a loss); seeded determinism; and a 200,000-hand convergence to 3.37%. Plus an opt-in slow test that reproduces the full 407M-deal Ante-Play enumeration exactly.
- Last reviewed
- Verified by exact unit tests against the published house edges (the odds are exact enumeration, not a solver) — the full 407M-deal Ante-Play enumeration reproduces the shipped constant bit-for-bit. No separate independent-review gate was required for this engine. Last reviewed 2026-07-12.