Is the Aces Up Side Bet Worth It? Four Card Poker's Side Bet, Exactly
Last reviewed: July 2026
Aces Up is Four Card Poker’s flashy side bet: it ignores the dealer and pays on your own best four-card hand, up to 50 to 1. The catch is in the name — a pair only pays if it’s aces. Kings, queens, any lower pair: those lose. Here’s the exact math, from a full enumeration of all 2,598,960 possible hands.
What Aces Up actually is
Before the deal you place a separate wager. After the cards come out, your best four-card hand is compared to a paytable — the dealer’s hand is irrelevant, and so is your fold/raise decision on the main game. Pair of aces or better wins; anything less loses.
The exact odds
Every five-card deal is one of 2,598,960 equally likely combinations. Your best four cards land like this on the common 50-40-8-5-4-3-1 table:
| Best 4-card hand | Count | Probability | 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 | 3.121% | 1 to 1 |
| Pair, 2s through Ks | 966,456 | 37.19% | loses |
| High card | 1,150,080 | 44.25% | loses |
Add it up and the bet wins about 18.6% of the time — and the exact house edge is 3.89%.
The trap inside the name
The sneaky part is that “pair” row. Nearly 40% of your hands will contain a pair below aces — hands that feel like they’re in the money and pay nothing. On Three Card Poker’s Pair Plus, any pair pays; here, only about 1 pair in 13 does. That one restriction is most of the house’s edge.
So is it worth it?
At 3.89% exactly, Aces Up is cheaper than Three Card Poker’s common Pair Plus (7.28%) but still costs more than the main Four Card Poker game (3.40% of the ante — and only ~1.56% of your total money wagered). Mathematically: skip it. As a lottery ticket: it’s one of the more reasonably priced side bets on the floor — the 8:1 on trips hits often enough (2.3%) to keep it lively. If you play it, keep it small relative to your ante.
One more honest note: paytables vary. Some casinos pay 6:1 or 7:1 on trips instead of 8:1 — each step down adds roughly a percent to the edge. Check the felt.
See how often it actually hits: play Four Card Poker free → with Aces Up on — or compare every side bet we’ve measured in the house-edge chart.