Your three cards
Your table
Play or fold: the exact numbers
| If you play | Chance | You get |
|---|
Pair Plus on this table
All 18,424 possible dealer hands are played against yours, so these figures are exact. The dealer qualifies with queen high or better. If the dealer does not qualify, the Ante pays 1 to 1 and the Play bet pushes. Straights beat flushes in this game, and A-2-3 counts as a straight. The Ante Bonus is paid whatever the dealer has. Results are in antes.
- Maths reviewed by Josh Miller
- Tested by Diana Westfield
Here is the whole of three card poker strategy: play Q-6-4 or better, fold anything worse. That’s it. A queen, then a six, then a four. Any pair beats it, so any pair is a play. The free CasinoCalcs calculator above checks any three cards against all 18,424 hands the dealer could have and tells you how far a hand is from the line, in antes and in money.
Three card poker strategy chart
| Your hand | Do this |
|---|---|
| Any pair, flush, straight, trips or straight flush | Play |
| Q-6-4 or higher (Q-6-5, Q-7-2, K-3-2, A-2-3 is a straight) | Play |
| Q-6-3 or lower (Q-5-4, J-10-8, anything jack high) | Fold |
Compare the cards in order: queen first, then the second card, then the third. Q-7-2 beats Q-6-4 because the second card is higher, so it’s a play even though the 2 looks weak. Any king or ace high hand is a play.
How to play three card poker
Three card poker rules take about a minute. You put out an ante, get three cards, and decide: fold and lose the ante, or play by putting out a second bet the same size. The dealer then shows three cards and needs queen-high or better to qualify. If the dealer doesn’t qualify, your ante pays 1 to 1 and the play bet is handed back. If the dealer qualifies, the better hand wins, and a win pays even money on both bets.
On top of that, a straight or better gets an ante bonus whether the dealer qualifies or not, typically 1 to 1 for a straight, 4 to 1 for trips and 5 to 1 for a straight flush. Pair Plus is a separate bet on your own three cards that ignores the dealer completely. Note that in three-card hands a straight beats a flush, because it’s rarer.
How close Q-6-4 really is
The line sits where playing and folding cost almost the same. Fold and you lose 1 ante, every time. Play Q-6-4 and you lose 0.995 antes on average. Play Q-6-3 and you lose 1.004. A gap of under half a percent of your ante, either way.
So why bother? Because hands well below the line are not close at all. Playing J-9-5 costs about 0.14 antes more than folding, and a player who plays every hand more than doubles the house edge: 7.65% of the ante instead of 3.37%. Folding feels like giving up. It’s the cheaper option, and that’s all that matters here.
| Hand | Play (antes) | Fold (antes) |
|---|---|---|
| Q-9-2 | −0.87 | −1 |
| Q-6-4 | −0.995 | −1 |
| Q-6-3 | −1.004 | −1 |
| Q-5-4 | −1.022 | −1 |
| J-10-8 | −1.14 | −1 |
The dealer needs queen high to qualify, which happens 69.6% of the time. When they don’t, your Ante is paid even money and the Play bet comes back. That’s why a queen-high hand is worth playing: a lot of the time you only have to beat a dealer who isn’t there.
Pair Plus and the Ante Bonus
Pair Plus doesn’t care about the dealer. Three cards come, the pay table pays. No decision, so no strategy, but the pay table matters a lot:
| Pair Plus pay table (SF / trips / straight / flush / pair) | House edge |
|---|---|
| 40 / 30 / 6 / 4 / 1 | 2.32% |
| 40 / 30 / 5 / 4 / 1 | 5.57% |
| 40 / 30 / 6 / 3 / 1 | 7.28% |
| 40 / 25 / 6 / 4 / 1 | 3.49% |
The flush line is the one to check. Dropping it from 4 to 3 triples the cost. The Ante Bonus (usually 1 for a straight, 4 for trips and 5 for a straight flush) is paid whatever the dealer holds and doesn’t change the Q-6-4 rule. For the full hand probabilities and pay tables, see the three card poker calculator. To drill the rule until it’s automatic, deal a few hundred hands in the Three Card Poker trainer.
Why the cheat sheet is so short
Three cards from 52 give only 22,100 hands, and the decision is binary, so the maths boils down to one threshold. Compare that with Ultimate Texas Hold’em, where you make three decisions with community cards. Even with perfect play, though, the game keeps 3.37% of each ante. At £10 a hand and 60 hands an hour that’s about £20 an hour on average, before any Pair Plus bets.
Strategy cuts the edge; it doesn’t remove it. Set your session budget first. BeGambleAware.org is there if you need it.