Three Card Poker
Also known as Tri Card Poker, Three-Card Poker
- Players
- 2-7 players (best with 4)
- Deck
- 1 standard deck (52 cards), plus chips or counters
- Time
- 15-45 minutes
- Difficulty
- Simple
- Category
- Casino
Setup
One player is the dealer and everyone else plays against them rather than against each other. In a casino the house takes that seat permanently; at home, give it to somebody with a large enough bank to cover the table and pass it round when they have had enough.
The dealer needs a full pack, well shuffled, and a way to keep each player's stakes apart, because two independent bets sit in front of every player and they are settled by different rules.
Before any card is dealt, each player who wants a hand puts up an ante. That is the price of being dealt in. Anyone may also, at the same moment, put up a second and quite separate stake — this project calls it the hand bet, the casinos call it Pair Plus, and it is a wager on your own three cards being worth something regardless of what the dealer turns out to hold. You may back either, or both. The ante is what buys you cards, and a few tables will let you put up the hand bet on its own without one — an option that is to the player's disadvantage, so it is offered rather than recommended.
The dealer then gives three cards face down to each player and three to themselves, and nobody sees the dealer's until every player has decided what to do.
Hands here are three cards, which quietly reorders poker. A straight beats a flush, the reverse of the five-card game, and it is not an arbitrary house rule: three cards to a straight is the rarer shape, coming up in about 3.3% of hands against roughly 5.0% for three to a suit. Three of a kind climbs past both. Rarity sets the order, as it does everywhere in poker; it is only which shapes are rare that has changed.
Play
Every player looks at their three cards and makes exactly one decision.
- Play. Add a second stake equal to your ante. This is not a raise and there is no amount to choose; you are simply staying in.
- Fold. Give the hand up. The ante is lost, and so is the hand bet if you made one, whatever your cards were worth.
The usual advice is to play any hand as good as queen-six-four and to fold everything below it, which is the point where staying in stops costing more than folding does. That one line is the whole of optimal play here.
Once every player has chosen, the dealer turns their three cards face up. Now the qualifier matters: the dealer's hand only plays if it is queen high or better.
IF THE DEALER DOES NOT QUALIFY
Nobody's cards are compared at all. Each remaining player's ante is paid at even money and the play stake is simply handed back — win or lose, strong hand or weak. The hand ends there for the ante side of the table.
IF THE DEALER QUALIFIES
Each remaining player's hand is compared against the dealer's, and the better hand wins.
- Beat the dealer, and the ante and the play stake are both paid at even money.
- Lose to the dealer, and both are lost.
- Tie exactly, and both stakes are returned.
The hand bet is settled separately and takes no notice of any of this. It pays if you hold a pair or better, and it pays whether the dealer qualified, beat you, or never got involved — the only way to lose it is to hold less than a pair, or to fold before the showdown.
Goal & scoring
Win more from the dealer than you hand over. There is no running total and no end state: each hand is settled on its own and the stack in front of you is the only score there is.
Three things can pay, and they pay independently, which is what makes the game read as more complicated than it is.
The ante and the play stake are the wager against the dealer, and the qualifier decides how they behave. A dealer who cannot show queen high pays the ante at even money and returns the play stake, so a hand you would have lost costs nothing and a hand you would have won pays half what it might have. That is the trade the qualifier makes, and it is the reason a strong hand against a weak dealer can feel like a wasted one.
The ante bonus is paid on the ante for holding a straight or better, and it is the unusual one: it is paid on the strength of your own three cards alone, so it arrives even in hands where the dealer beats you and takes both stakes. A straight pays even money, three of a kind four to one, a straight flush five to one.
The hand bet ignores the dealer completely. A pair pays even money, and the ladder climbs steeply from there to forty to one for a straight flush, because three cards make those shapes rarely.
The pay tables above are the common ones and they are not universal — the hand bet in particular is where a house trims, and a table paying three to one on a flush rather than four is the same game with a materially worse deal. Read the layout before you sit down.
Played as well as it can be played, the ante side costs about 2 per cent, and adding the hand bet costs a little more rather than less. You will also see the figure quoted as around 3.4 per cent: that one measures against the ante alone, where the first measures against everything you stake in a hand, and neither is wrong. The strategy that gets you there is short — play queen-six-four or better, fold below it, and leave the hand bet alone.
Hands rank the same way whichever bet is being settled, and the order is the three-card one: straight flush, three of a kind, straight, flush, pair, high card. Between two hands of the same shape the higher ranks decide it, ace high down to two, and a hand identical all the way down is a tie.
| Scores | Value | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Ante and play, beating a qualifying dealer | 1 to 1 each | — |
| Ante, dealer does not qualify | 1 to 1 | the play stake comes back untouched |
| Ante bonus: straight | 1 to 1 | paid even if the dealer beats you |
| Ante bonus: three of a kind | 4 to 1 | paid even if the dealer beats you |
| Ante bonus: straight flush | 5 to 1 | paid even if the dealer beats you |
| Hand bet: pair | 1 to 1 | — |
| Hand bet: flush | 4 to 1 | — |
| Hand bet: straight | 6 to 1 | — |
| Hand bet: three of a kind | 30 to 1 | — |
| Hand bet: straight flush | 40 to 1 | — |
Variants
Six Card Bonus — A third stake, offered alongside the other two, on the best five-card hand that can be made from your three cards and the dealer's three together. It pays from three of a kind upward and takes no notice of who won the hand, or even of whether you folded before the dealer's cards were turned over. Payouts vary widely between tables, and the top of the ladder is a royal flush.
Prime — A side stake on all your cards being the same colour, red or black, usually paying three to one, with a larger payout if the dealer's three match your colour as well. It is offered mostly in the United Kingdom.
Playing it at home — The house edge is what pays a casino's dealer, so at a kitchen table it just makes the dealer's seat the good one. Rotate it every few hands, or drop the ante bonus and the hand bet and play only ante against play, which is close to an even game. Agree the pay table out loud before the first deal, because everyone at the table has met a different one.
Rules checked against Pagat, Wikipedia.