Three Card Poker: Ante and Play

Three cards in front of you, the dealer’s three face down, and one choice to make: put down a second bet the same size as the first, or fold. Which hands are played, and which are folded?

The queen and the six are the same in all three hands. Only the third card changes, and with it the decision.

Leoformer dealer · rules and maths

I dealt this game for years, and the decision people found hardest had the least in it. Most hands decide themselves: a pair, a straight, a king or an ace goes in. All the work is in the queens, and all of that work is one hand to remember.

A game against the dealer

At a Three Card Poker table you do not play against the other people sitting there. Your three cards meet the dealer’s three, and the higher hand, yours or the dealer’s, settles the Ante and the Play bet.

Our own plan of one seat, not a copy of any room’s layout. The Ante is where the round starts, and the Play circle is where the second bet goes. Pair Plus is a side bet decided on your three cards alone, and lesson 9.2 is about it.

A hand goes the same way every time, from a single ordinary deck. After you see your three cards, you either play, by adding a bet equal to the Ante, or fold, and folding loses the Ante.

1. The AnteYou put the Ante down before any card is dealt.
2. Three cards eachYou and the dealer get three cards; the dealer’s stay face down.
3. Play or foldPlay is a second bet the same size as the Ante; folding gives up the Ante.
4. The dealer’s cardsThe dealer turns them over and needs queen-high or better to qualify.
5. SettlingThe Ante and the Play are settled against the dealer’s hand; the Ante Bonus, on your own hand.

The Play bet is always the same size as the Ante, never more and never less.

Three cards rank differently

With only three cards, a straight is harder to make than a flush, so in this game a straight ranks above a flush. An ace counts high, and also low in A-2-3, which is a straight.

Of the 22,100 three-card hands that can be dealt, fewer are straights than flushes, and that is the whole reason for the order.

Two hands with no pair compare card by card from the highest down: K-9-4 is higher than K-9-3, and Q-7-2 is higher than Q-6-4.

The dealer needs queen-high

The dealer’s hand counts against your Ante only if it is a queen-high hand or better: that is what qualifying means. A king-high hand or a pair of fives qualifies too, though it holds no queen; J-8-2 does not. When the dealer does not qualify, your Ante is paid even money and your Play bet comes back.

When the dealer qualifies and your hand is higher, the Ante and the Play are each paid even money; when the two hands are equal, both bets come back. When the dealer’s hand is higher, both bets are lost.

Folding is the one row you decide yourself, and it always ends the same way: the Ante is lost, whatever the dealer holds.

Leoformer dealer · rules and maths

When the dealer turns over less than queen-high, the table relaxes. Look at what actually happens, though: the Ante is paid and the Play bet only comes back. A dealer hand that does not qualify pays you on one bet, not on two.

The Ante Bonus

A straight or better is also paid an Ante Bonus, from its own pay table, and under the rules for B.C. casinos the bonus is paid whatever the dealer holds.

Three of the four print the same table, whose payouts read 5-4-1 from a straight flush down. The 4-3-1 table printed for two rooms in Ontario pays less on three of a kind and on a straight flush, and the same on a straight.

The rules for Quebec casinos pay the bonus only on a hand that played, a guide for Ontario names the bonus without printing its table, and the other printed tables are the ones above. The rules for B.C. casinos do not say what happens to the bonus on a folded hand, so in the practice run every Ante Bonus is on a hand that played.

Play above Q-6-4, fold the rest

The one printed rule for when to play is in a guide for Ontario: raise on any hand higher than Q-6-4, and fold anything else. Raise is the guide’s word for putting down the Play bet. It is a rule from a guide for one province, not a rule printed for the whole country.

Folding always averages −1.000 in Antes: the Ante itself. Playing costs less than folding when a hand’s average is higher than that, and the rule and our count agree on every row except Q-6-4.

By the guide’s words Q-6-4 itself folds, because it is not higher than Q-6-4. By our count playing it averages +0.007 of an Ante better than folding, less than a hundredth, so the practice run below counts both answers on Q-6-4, and the questions at the end do not ask about it.

Optimal play, the choice our count says costs less on each hand, folds 7,200 of the 22,100 hands that can be dealt, and the guide’s rule folds 7,260. The 60 hands between the two are the Q-6-4 hands of mixed suits.

What the game costs

No document we could read prints a percentage price for this game. Every price on this page is our own count, over every hand you can be dealt against every hand the dealer can hold.

The 4-3-1 table costs more in both columns, because it pays less on two of its three rows. The guide’s rule costs almost nothing more than optimal play.

Multiplied by the hands in an hour, the price becomes money. No Canadian document we could read prints how many hands an hour a Three Card Poker table deals; the figure here is the one in the Las Vegas Strip rating table. The table has no figure for this game; the figure for Caribbean Stud, another poker game played against the dealer, is used.

1. One hand$0.34the average price of an Ante of $10, an example bet, with optimal play on the 5-4-1 table, rounded to the cent
2. Hands in an hour50the figure in the Las Vegas Strip rating table
3. One hour$16.86on average, worked out from the unrounded price of one hand

The price of one hand is rounded to the cent, and the hour is worked out from the unrounded price, so multiplying the rounded cents lands a little away from the hour. The $10 is an example bet, not a table minimum and not a suggested bet. Amounts are in Canadian dollars. Price of an hour works the same arithmetic for your own bet.

Mayaformer floor supervisor · manners, money and breaks

Every hand at this table asks you for the Ante, and every hand you play asks for the same again. Decide at home how much money and how much time the evening gets, and stop when either one runs out.

Playing a hand you would fold because the last few went badly is a hunch, and a hunch only raises the price. Putting more down to get a loss back is the subject of lesson 10.3, Chasing losses; the lines below are there for the evening it stops being fun.

The lesson on one card

That is the lesson. Here it is on one card: print it, or keep it on your phone.

Practice: play or fold

Level 1 deals you three cards with the dealer’s three face down, and you play or fold by the rule; the answer then shows what the dealer turned over and how the round would have ended. Level 2 turns the dealer’s cards over after you have played, and you settle the Ante, the Play bet and the Ante Bonus; a few hands are settled on the tables printed for Quebec and Ontario, and the scene says so.

Nothing is bet here. The $10 is an example bet for the amounts shown, and the Pair Plus circle stays empty: that bet is lesson 9.2.

Check yourself

Mayaformer floor supervisor · manners, money and breaks

Three quick ones. Pick an answer, then check it. No timer, no points: just whether it stuck.

Back to the question we opened with. Play any hand higher than Q-6-4 and fold the rest: that keeps the price of each hand close to the lowest it can be, and the dealer’s face-down cards play no part in the choice.

Where to go next, and further reading

19+ (18+ in AB, MB, QC) · Play responsibly · the helplines are further up this page

Further reading

• Rules of Play for Table Games — Poker · BCLCThe B.C. rules for Three Card Poker: the Ante and Play bets, the Queen the dealer needs, and the Pair Plus and 6 Card Bonus pay tables.
• Game rules: Three Card Poker · Loto-QuébecQuébec’s rules, in force since 2018, with their own Ante bonus and Pair Plus tables.
• Three Card Poker · OLG PlaySmartThe game against the dealer and against a pay table, and the one rule of thumb for when to play a hand.

How it’s worked out