Your hand
How you are doing
Cheat sheet
- Play any pair or better
- Play any ace-high or king-high hand
- Play Q-6-4 or better: queen, then 6 or higher, then 4 or higher
- Fold Q-6-3 and below, and anything jack-high
Keys: P to play, F to fold, Enter for the next hand. Answers come from the exact value of the hand against all 18,424 dealer hands, with the usual Ante Bonus (straight 1, trips 4, straight flush 5). The Pair Plus side bet has no decisions, so it is left out. Practice only.
- Maths reviewed by Josh Miller
- Tested by Diana Westfield
This Three Card Poker trainer deals you three cards and asks the only question the game ever asks: play or fold? It’s free and uses no money. Behind the scenes it plays your hand against all 18,424 hands the dealer might have, so when it says Q-6-3 is a fold, you can see by how much.
The strategy fits on a beer mat, Q-6-4. The trouble is applying it to Q-7-2 or Q-6-3 in the second it takes the dealer to look at you.
Three Card Poker trainer: play or fold
P plays, F folds, and Enter deals again. Over on the scoreboard you’ll find your hit rate split three ways, made hands, ace-to-queen high and jack-high rubbish, and it’s nearly always the middle group where the mistakes pile up. “Queen-high only” deals nothing but the borderline hands, which is where all the decisions live.
The Q-6-4 rule, explained
Pairs and anything better are easy plays, and so is any hand holding an ace or a king. Queens are where you have to look closer: a queen with a 7 or better behind it plays, a queen-6 needs a 4 or better as the third card, and that’s how you end up playing Q-6-4 while throwing away Q-6-3. Anything jack-high folds, because the dealer needs queen-high to qualify and a jack-high hand can’t beat any dealer hand that does.
Why Q-6-4 and not just “queen or better”? Because folding always costs exactly one ante, while playing a weak queen still wins the ante every time the dealer fails to qualify, which happens roughly a third of the time. Around Q-6-4 those two costs cross over. The CasinoCalcs trainer shows the numbers: Q-6-4 is worth about −0.99 antes if you play and exactly −1 if you fold, so it’s a thin play, but a play.
Three Card Poker practice and the side bet
Pair Plus has no decisions, so it’s left out here. Its house edge depends entirely on the pay table, which the Three Card Poker calculator works out for you. The Three Card Poker strategy page checks any hand you type in, and the casino poker house edge table compares it with the other games. Ultimate Texas Hold’em has its own trainer, and the full list is on the casino game trainers page.
Knowing the maths doesn’t remove the house edge. BeGambleAware.org is free and confidential if it stops being fun.