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3-Card Poker

3-Card Poker
This variation on regular poker is available in most casinos and is a highly entertaining (and addictive) game!

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3-Card Poker is gaining rapidly in popularity and you’ll now find at least one table in most major casinos in Vegas. It’s actually much more difficult to explain than it is to actually play so if this overview doesn’t help I recommend doing what I did – watch a table for awhile and you’ll grasp it pretty quickly.

Basically you get three cards with no draw and you have to make the best poker hand out of those three cards. Possible combinations include straight flush (three sequential cards of the same suit), three of a kind (three queens for example), straight (three sequential cards of any suit), flush (three cards of the same suit), a pair (two queens for example), or lacking any of that you can still win if you have the higher cards than the dealer.

There are actually two games in one on a 3-Card Poker table – Pair Plus and Ante and Play. In Pair Plus you are betting only on your hand, not competing against anyone else at the table or the dealer. If you get a pair or better you get a payoff according to the following table:

  • Straight Flush: 40 to 1
  • Three of a Kind: 30 to 1
  • Straight: 6 to 1
  • Flush: 4 to 1 (some casinos only pay 3-1)
  • Pair: 1 to 1

    In Ante and Play you are betting that your hand will be better than the dealers but are not competing against anyone else at the table. You place an Ante bet, view your cards, and then if you decide you have a decent shot at it, you place a bet in the Play area equal to your Ante bet (so if you bet $5 on Ante you bet another $5 to play). If you get lousy cards and don’t want to go forward you can fold but you lose your Ante bet and your Pair Plus bet if you made one.

    At that point the dealer’s hand is revealed – he or she must have at least a single queen for the bet to count and if not your Ante and Play bets are returned. If you beat the dealer’s hand you get a 1 to 1 payoff but there is a bonus for a really good winning hand:

  • Straight Flush: 5 to 1
  • Three of a Kind: 4 to 1
  • Straight: 1 to 1

    On the table you’ll see three betting areas – the Ante, the Play, and the Pair Plus. You can play only the Pair Plus or only the Ante or both. Place your chips in the areas you want to bet in.

    Your three cards are dealt. If you only played Pair Plus it doesn’t matter what the dealer has – you get paid according to the first table above if you had at least a pair. If you don’t, you lose your bet.

    If you played the Ante bet you must then either fold and lose the Ante bet or match the Ante bet by placing the same amount on the Play area. The dealer’s hand is revealed and payouts happen accordingly.

    Each hand consists of one fresh 52-card deck.

    Like I said, this game is actually a lot easier to play than it sounds on paper and it’s actually a lot of fun – much more interactive and interesting than blackjack. Look for it on your next trip to Vegas.

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