How To Play 3 Card Poker

Today, we’re going to show you an instructional video on three card poker. We’re not really going to concentrate on strategy today as much as we are on how to play the game and how the side bets work. There will be some strategy involved, but we’ll go ahead and go from there and see how it goes. Let’s get to it.

With three card poker, the only required bet that you have to play is the ante bet. You’re playing your three cards versus the dealer’s three cards. You also have a side bet called the six card bonus, which is your three cards plus the dealer’s three cards to make a poker hand with a minimum of three of a kind. Your pairs plus bet pays on your three cards, from one pair all the way up to a mini royal. Then you have your required ante bet and, if you decide to play, your play bet. If you fold, then you fold. If you’re playing the six card bonus, you tuck your cards underneath there because the six card bonus is a separate bet from everything else. We’ll explain that and show you as we go.

The dealer has to have a queen high to qualify. If the dealer does not have a queen high and you’ve played your hand, then your play bet will be pushed back to you, and you’ll still be paid on the ante no matter what you or the dealer have. Let’s go ahead and play out a few hands and see how it goes.

Another thing to note—there is an ante bonus if you get a straight, three of a kind, straight flush, or mini royal in your hand. It’ll pay one to one for the ante, and then on top of that, it’ll pay the ante bonus. Now we’re going to try a couple of hands of three card poker and see how it goes.

We have a nine of hearts, a ten, and a jack. We’re going to go ahead and play that. The dealer does not qualify because they have a ten high. Our play bet gets pushed back, and we get paid one to one, plus one to one for the straight on the ante bonus, and six to one on the pair plus. Another thing to note in three card poker is that a straight is better than a flush when it comes to your three cards. When it comes to the six card bonus, it follows regular poker rules, where a flush beats a straight. But for your three-card hand, a straight is better than a flush.

Next, we got a nine, a three, and a king. That is a playable hand with a king, probably one of the minimal playable hands, but we win. The dealer has a queen, jack, and deuce, so we’ll lose the pair plus and the six card bonus. We’ll get paid one to one on the play and one to one on the ante. Let’s go ahead and get one more hand in. Before the dealer scoops up all the cards, we’ll point at each bet to show you exactly why we’re winning and why we’re losing.

We have a ten, a six, and a deuce, which is not really a playable hand, so we’re going to go ahead and fold that. When we fold, we’re putting it under the six card bonus just to make sure that nothing else comes up. But between our cards and their cards, there is no six card bonus, so we lose that bet as well. We’ll play one last hand.

Three card poker is a very easy game and can be a lot of fun in the card rooms. Right now, at the time of this recording, the three card jackpot is around $16,000 for a mini royal of spades. We have a six, seven, and five—a straight—so we’re going to go ahead and bet that. We’re really hoping there’s a four and an eight in the dealer’s hand. Let’s see what we can do. There’s a four!

We won’t get paid on the six card bonus because there’s no flush or straight, but we will get paid on the pairs plus. For a straight, that pays six to one. Then we get two to one total on the ante and play—one to one for the win and one to one for the ante bonus. And that’s how you play three card poker.

We hope you enjoyed this tutorial and that you head on down to Wind Derby in St. Petersburg, Florida, to enjoy some complimentary drinks while playing table games. We’ll see you at the tables.