Three Card Poker
Three cards against the dealer. Ante, look at your hand, then play or fold — with the exact value of both choices for the hand in front of you, and every house edge counted out rather than simulated.
This table plays with medals now
Three Card Poker now plays with your medals from the Medal Game Center, the same medals every game there uses. The 1,000 practice chips this table used to start you with are retired: they were a different thing on a different scale, so they are not turned into medals.
Medals are for playing the games on this site only. They are not money: they cannot be bought, cashed out or exchanged for anything.
The same medals play every game at the Medal Game Center, where the daily bonus and the one reset are.
- Play Q-6-4 or better, fold anything worse — that one rule is the whole optimal strategy.
- Folding costs exactly the Ante. Playing a weak hand risks two antes, but it still wins one whenever the dealer fails to qualify — about three hands in ten.
- Pair Plus is a separate bet on your own cards. At 1-3-6-30-40 it costs 7.28 of every 100 medals bet on it, more than twice the main game.
- Hands
- 0
- Played
- 0 – · 67.42%
- Dealer qualified
- 0 – · 69.59%
- Won / even / lost
- 0 / 0 / 0
- Agreed with the strategy
- –
Three Card Poker is small enough to count completely: there are 22,100 three-card hands, and for each one the dealer can hold any of 18,424 hands from the other 49 cards — 407,170,400 combinations. Every number on this tab comes from playing all of them. Nothing is simulated.
Every three-card hand, and what Pair Plus pays
| Hand | Ways | Probability | Pays | Return |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Straight flush | 48 | 0.2172% | 40:1 | +8.69% |
| Three of a kind | 52 | 0.2353% | 30:1 | +7.06% |
| Straight | 720 | 3.2579% | 6:1 | +19.55% |
| Flush | 1,096 | 4.9593% | 3:1 | +14.88% |
| Pair | 3,744 | 16.9412% | 1:1 | +16.94% |
| High card | 16,440 | 74.3891% | loses | −74.39% |
| Total | 22,100 | 100% | −7.28% |
With three cards a straight (720 ways) is rarer than a flush (1,096 ways), so it ranks higher — the reverse of five-card poker. “Return” is probability × what the hand pays: the rows add up to what the side bet gives back per medal bet, and what is missing is the house edge. Cutting the flush from 4:1 to 3:1 more than triples it.
Ante & Play
With the best strategy — play Q-6-4 or better — each of the 407,170,400 combinations ends in one of five ways. The Ante Bonus is paid on top whenever you hold a straight or better.
| Outcome | Net (antes) | Probability | Combinations | Return |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| You fold | −1 | 32.579% | 132,652,800 | −32.579% |
| You play, the dealer doesn’t qualify | +1 | 20.997% | 85,493,652 | +20.997% |
| You play and beat the dealer | +2 | 23.910% | 97,354,684 | +47.820% |
| You play and tie | 0 | 0.066% | 267,648 | 0.000% |
| You play and the dealer wins | −2 | 22.448% | 91,401,616 | −44.896% |
| Ante Bonus (on top) | +1 / +4 / +5 | 3.710% | — | +5.285% |
| Total | 100% | 407,170,400 | −3.373% |
The house edge is quoted against the Ante: you lose 3.37% of it per hand. But two hands in three you put a second, equal bet on the table, so the average wager is 1.674 antes — per unit actually risked (the “element of risk”) the game costs 2.01%.
In medals, at the table’s limit of 10 on each spot: with the best strategy a hand puts 16.74 medals on the Ante and Play bets on average and loses 0.34 of them, and 10 medals on Pair Plus lose another 0.73 a hand. Every bet is a whole number of medals and every win a whole multiple of it, so nothing is ever rounded.
Why Q-6-4 is the cut-off
Folding always costs one ante. Playing puts a second ante at risk: you win one when the dealer fails to qualify, and win or lose two at a showdown. A hand is worth playing as soon as that averages better than −1. The curve shows the value of playing every unsuited high-card hand, weakest to strongest: flat while the hand can’t beat any qualifying dealer, then climbing through the fold line between Q-6-3 and Q-6-4.
| Hand | EV of playing | vs folding | Dealer doesn’t qualify | You win | Best |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| J-10-8 | −1.1415 | −0.1415 | 28.62% | 0.00% | Fold |
| Q-3-2 | −1.0672 | −0.0672 | 31.00% | 0.00% | Fold |
| Q-5-4 | −1.0214 | −0.0214 | 31.22% | 0.98% | Fold |
| Q-6-2 | −1.0128 | −0.0128 | 31.10% | 1.28% | Fold |
| Q-6-3 | −1.0031 | −0.0031 | 31.18% | 1.47% | Fold |
| Q-6-4 | −0.9939 | +0.0061 | 31.25% | 1.65% | Play |
| Q-6-5 | −0.9872 | +0.0128 | 31.22% | 1.83% | Play |
| Q-7-2 | −0.9762 | +0.0238 | 31.10% | 2.20% | Play |
| Q-J-9 | −0.6811 | +0.3189 | 31.08% | 9.59% | Play |
| K-3-2 | −0.5518 | +0.4482 | 31.00% | 12.88% | Play |
| A-K-J | +0.6336 | +1.6336 | 33.62% | 40.55% | Play |
Each row averages the 60 suit combinations of those ranks. Which exact cards you hold changes what the dealer can have, but only in the third decimal: the worst Q-6-4 is still worth −0.9946 and the best Q-6-3 only −1.0026.
What the Ante Bonus is worth
The bonus is paid on the Ante for a straight or better, win or lose. Those hands are never folded, so its value is simply how often they come up times what they pay.
| Hand | Return | Pays | Probability |
|---|---|---|---|
| Straight flush | +1.086% | 5:1 | 0.2172% |
| Three of a kind | +0.941% | 4:1 | 0.2353% |
| Straight | +3.258% | 1:1 | 3.2579% |
| Total | +5.285% |
Together the bonus returns 5.29% of every Ante. Without it the house edge would be 8.66%.
Strategies compared
The same count prices any rule for playing or folding.
| Strategy | House edge | Element of risk | Hands played | Average wager |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Optimal: play Q-6-4 or better | 3.37% | 2.01% | 67.42% | 1.674 |
| Play like the dealer: Queen-high or better | 3.45% | 2.03% | 69.59% | 1.696 |
| Always play | 7.65% | 3.83% | 100.00% | 2.000 |
Playing like the dealer only goes wrong on the 480 Queen-high hands weaker than Q-6-4, and each of those mistakes is tiny, so it costs less than a tenth of a point. Never folding plays 7,200 hands the best strategy folds — 6,720 of them can’t beat any dealer who qualifies — and more than doubles the edge.
FLOOR JACKPOT
+ 1% of every medal played goes to the floor jackpot: the site adds 1 medal for every 100 you play, on top of what you play. Nothing is taken out of it, so this machine’s own return is exactly as shown.
Each medal played is also a 1 in 150,000 chance to win the whole pool, which starts again at 1,000 medals once it is won. In the long run it brings back 1.67 medals for every 100 played, but only in the long run: most players never win it.
It is for players who are signed in and have joined the floor, on the first 20,000 medals each plays in a day (Japan time) at the linked machines, with one floor jackpot a day at most.
Like the rankings, the floor jackpot is for fun. The medals played that feed it are what players’ browsers report: the site checks each report against what that machine allows, but it cannot prove it. The draw itself is made on the site’s server, never in a browser.
Linked machines: Medal Pusher, Slot Machine, Calico Janken, Roulette & Martingale, Three Card Poker, Big Catch Harbor, Mini Turf Racing, Ball Bingo, Star Festival Big Wheel, High & Low Ladder, Moonlit Sic Bo, Whale Isle Sugoroku, Candy Shop Medal Maze, Video Keno, Hot Spring Smart Ball, Goldfish Lantern Pachinko, Cherry Blossom Carousel, Onsen Shooting Gallery.
Three strategies on the same cards
Shuffles a fresh deck for every hand, deals three cards each and lets all three strategies play that same deal through the table’s own rules, one Ante a hand. The dashed lines are the exact edges from the Odds tab.