3 Card Poker Strategy
Three Card Poker is one of the fastest card games to play and one of the easiest casino game to learn. But it is also a game which can lose you a fair chunk of change if you don't know the correct tactics to improve your chance of winning.
This is only strategy for the hand that you are playing against the dealer. Click here if you are looking for Pair Plus strategies.
Three Card Poker Starting Hands
The first thing you must know when playing tri card poker is the
how strong your starting hand is. The minimum hand that the dealer
can qualify with is a Queen high, meaning that the dealer needs one
of their three cards to be a Queen, King or Ace to challenge the bet
that you made.
This seems like an easy enough game to pick your spots and bet when you don't think that the dealer is going to qualify. This is a bad strategy though. When you win and the dealer doesn't qualify, you only win back your ante. When you play for the dealer not to qualify and he does, you lose both your ante and play bets.
If you like the odds and think that you can win twice as many of these hands that you lose, you would be wrong. The overall chance of a dealer receiving a qualifying hand is a little under 70%. This means your betting on a one in three chance happening more often than it should.
That being said, you should not bet on your hand if it does not beat a qualifying hand.
Here are some statistics on the strength of your three card hand and your probability of winning the hand. This is also very useful for determining the strength of your starting hand in many 7 card games where you start with three cards.
Three Card Hand Strength
First thing is first, if you have a pair or higher in your hand.
You should always play, even if it is a pair of 2's. You have nearly
three to one odds that the dealer is not holding a pair.
Straight Flush - 99.8% chance of winning. There are 48 possible combinations of getting a straight flush out of a total of 22,100 different three card combinations. While not as rare as you would see in 5 card poker, this hand will rarely be beaten.
Three of a Kind - 99.5% chance of winning. There are 52 possible combinations to get three of a kind. Only a higher three of a kind or a straight flush will win.
Straight - 96.3% chance of winning. There are 720 possible combinations to get a straight. This still means you should only expect to get a straight one out of every 30 hands. You think the odds would be higher, but they aren't.
Flush - 91.3% chance of winning. There are 1096 possible combinations to receive a three card flush. This is about one out of every 20 hands, which tells you why it is lower hand then a straight.
Any Pair - 74.4% chance of winning. There are 3744 possible combinations, which means you should expect to receive a pair in your hand one out of every 5.9 hands.
Ace high - 57.0% chance of winning. There are 3840 possible combinations or a slightly better chance than receiving a pair.
King high - 42.3% chance of winning. Only 3240 possible combinations and falling because we are removing cards from the deck.
Queen high - 30.4% chance of winning. There are 2640 possible combinations.
If you add all of the total possible combinations you get 15,380 out of a possible 22,100 combinations. Divide the two and you get a 69.59% chance of a qualifying hand being dealt.
That means if you did not receive a qualifying hand, there is a very good chance that the dealer did. This is why you should fold any hand that is Jack high or less.
In addition to that, you should fold any Queen high that is low. The recommended minimum hand that you should think about playing is Queen-6-4, but even this is a little to low for me. I would prefer to play with at least a Queen-10-X or Queen-9-X.
Strength of Your Flush
- Ace High Flush - 95.1% chance of being the winning hand
-
King High - 94.1% chance of winning - Queen High - 93.4% chance of winning
- Jack High - 92.7% chance of winning
- Ten High - 92.2% chance
- Nine High - 91.9% chance
- Eight High - 91.6% chance
- Seven High - 91.5% chance
- Six High - 91.4% chance
- Five High - 91.3% chance
Probability of Pairs Winning
- Aces - 90.0% chance of winning the hand
Kings - 88.7% chance of winning- Queens - 87.4% chance of winning
- Jacks - 86.1% chance of winning
- Tens - 84.8% chance
- Nines - 83.5% chance
- Eights - 82.2% chance
- Sevens - 80.9% chance
- Sixes - 79.6% chance
- Fives - 78.3% chance
- Fours - 77.0% chance
- Threes - 75.7% chance
- Twos - 74.4% chance
When it comes to actual strategy to win money at Three Card Poker, the best advice I have is to play the odds.
Remember that one of your goals while playing should be that you want the Dealer to have a qualifying hand. If he doesn't, than you lose out on not winning anything on your play bet.
Three Card Poker Ante Bonus
Because there is a significant house advantage in comparison to some other games, you can receive a bonus for getting a straight or better.
The house advantage is slightly different between an Ante a Play bet on a hand in comparison to before you decide if you want to bet the Play bet.
Ante and Play wager - The house advantage is 2.01%
Ante wager only - There is a 3.37% house advantage.
Here is the bonus that you receive on your Ante bet for receiving the following hands:
Straight Flush - You win 5 times the amount of your ante.
Trips - You win 4 times the amount of your ante.
Straight - You win an ante back, regardless if you win or not.
