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How To Play Caribbean Stud

This game is a variation of poker played on a blackjack sized table. Following is how the game is played:

Play starts with each player making an ante bet in a designated square. Each player then receives five cards face down. Players may examine their own cards but may not share information with each other. The dealer also receives five cards, four face down and one face up. At this point each player has two options: raise or fold. If the player raises he puts twice his ante bet in the raise box. If the player folds he must relinquish his cards to the dealer, who will collect his ante bet. After all players have made their plays the dealer exposes his own cards. If he does not qualify with at least an ace and king then all remaining ante bets pay even money and all raise bets push. If the dealer does qualify then each remaining player hand is individually compared against the dealer's hand, and the best poker hand wins in each case. If the dealer has the higher hand the player loses both ante and raise. In the unlikely event the two hands are equal in value then both ante and raise push. If the player has the higher hand the ante pays even money and the raise pays according to the following pay table.

Strategy

The player should raise on any pair or better, fold on anything less than ace/king, and should sometimes raise and sometimes fold on ace/king. To play Caribbean stud perfectly would involve memorizing the charts in my appendix on when exactly to raise on ace/king. Of course nobody is going to do that so a more simplified strategy is clearly called for. By studying the appendix you will notice certain paterns of when the odds favor raising and when they don't. I have summarized these patterns in the following suggested rules of thumb on when to raise on ace/king:

• Raise if the dealer's card is a 2 through queen and matches one of yours.

• Raise if the dealer's card is an ace or king and you have a queen or jack in your hand.

• Raise if the dealer's rank does not match any of yours and you have a queen in your hand and the dealer's card is less than your fourth highest card.

This strategy is unique to this page but is not the only strategy I have heard of. Following are various other strategies, their total loss based on all possible 19,933,230,517,200 combinations of hands, the house edge, and the "element of risk" (defined below). The "matching rank" strategy calls for raising on any pair or better and on ace/king when one of the player's cards matches the rank of the dealer's up card (which lowers the odds of the dealer forming a pair).