Casino Poker Odds

Out of 22100 hands from one deck. The order follows the counts exactly, which is why a straight outranks a flush here and the straight flush, four hands rarer than three of a kind, sits at the top. Teen patti deals the same hands and ranks three of a kind first by convention; the count is unchanged either way.

Pair Plus pays on the hand alone, so its price is the schedule multiplied through the counts in the first table and nothing else. Table B lowers two middle payouts; table C lowers only the flush, the commonest paying hand after a pair, and that single change costs more than both of B's together.

Under the rule of raising with queen-six-four or better, a dealer who qualifies with queen high, and an ante bonus that pays a straight 1 to 1, three of a kind 4 to 1 and a straight flush 5 to 1. The ante bonus is paid in the last four rows whenever the hand earns it, and is what makes the arithmetic come out where it does.

Add the rows above up, bonus included, and the ante bet gives up 3.37% of each ante over time. That is the figure usually quoted as the house edge, and it is measured against the ante alone, as if the play bet were free. It is not: on 67.42% of hands a second chip goes down beside the first, and against everything actually wagered the game keeps 2.01%, a figure sometimes called the element of risk.

The key number: Queen-six-four play prices the ante at 3.37% per ante; count the play bets too and the game keeps 2.01% of everything wagered.

Both are correct and they answer different questions. The first says what the game costs per hand sat; the second says what it costs per unit of money exposed, which is the number to set beside a side bet or another game. Pair Plus on its best table, at 2.32%, is dearer than the ante by the second measure and cheaper by the first.

The dealer reaches queen high on 69.59% of hands, one in 1.44. The rest of the time a raised hand is paid on the ante alone, which is why a weak raise is not quite as bad as it looks and why the raising line sits as low as queen-six-four.

Caribbean Stud hands are five-card hands judged against a dealer who shows one card, and Casino Hold'em hands are built from two cards and a five-card board with the decision taken after three of them. Each has a cost that depends on its ante schedule, its qualifying line and, for the jackpot bets, a meter that changes by the minute. One figure quoted for such a game would misdescribe most of the titles listed here, and these pages print none until the table in front of you is the one being priced.

What can be read from any such table in a moment is the two lines that matter most: the dealer's qualifying hand and the schedule the raise is paid on. A higher qualifying line hands the ante more even-money wins; a schedule that pays a flush or a straight generously is worth more than one that pays only the rare hands well, because those are the hands a session actually sees.

In short: Caribbean Stud and the Hold'em games carry no single price: each table's qualifying hand and raise schedule set its own, and both are printed where you can read them before the first ante.