Three Card Poker

Pairplus

3-card-poker_en Three Card Poker is played with a 52-card deck. The ranking of the hands is as followed (top to bottom):
Straight Flush (all three cards are sequential and in the same suite)
Tripple (three of the same kind)
Straight (three sequential cards)
Flush (three cards of the same suite)
Pair (a pair)
Nothing
Every player receives three cards. The Pairplus is the easiest combination to win, as every player who holds a pair or more, receives a payout based upon his wager and the winning combination.
Chances for a straight flush lie at 0.22%, whereas odds for a pair are at 16.94%. Chances to get nothing are 30.41%.

Ante-and-Play

With the Ante-and-Play version players place their bets before they receive cards. Once a player receives his cards he can make the choice to either play or fold. Once a hand is folded the player has lost any claim on the pot.
A player can also raise by the minimum of the set bet. Now a player has three possibilities:

The dealer could not qualify, meaning he does not have a Queen or higher in that case the player receives the difference between the Ante Bet and what the dealer would have won. This is called “even money”
Should the dealer qualify but the player wins with a stronger hand, then he receives the full ante amount plus his bet.
Should the dealer win, then the player looses his entire wager.

Rules in the case of a tie vary from casino to casino, at times the player receives his wager back, at times he receives even money. Contrary to Pairplus there is a bonus at Ante-and-play, which at times can also have a payout of 5 to 1, with a straight flush.
In the Californian version of Three Card Poker one of the dealer’s cards is shown face up. But players need to beat the dealer’s hand or tie, even if the dealer does not qualify his hand. Additionally there is no ante bonus, and players have to pay in order to enter the game. This fee is usually 1% and is rounded up to the next full Dollar/Euro/Pound amount.

Strategies

The optimal strategy at Ante-and-Play is to raise if you have a Queen, 6 and 4 or higher. You should ignore any bonus payments are its odds for payout usually lie at 5.29%, but at 8.66% to loose your original wager. Any other hand should be folded, as only the odds of loosing increase, not the ones of winning.
You can also play Three Card Poker online, often casinos offer a calculator to determine your odds.

History

Three Card Poker also called “tri-card Poker" is a fairly new game. You wll find is mostly in casinos, in two different versions, the “Pairplus" und das “Ante-and-Play".
Three Card Poker developed out of the English “Brag” game, which in turn evolved from the 300 year “Primero”, another very fast card game.
Derek Webb is credited with developing the current Three Card Poker version in the 1990s.