| TOP 10 ONLINE CASINOS |
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| CARIBBEAN POKER RULES AND STRATEGIES |
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Caribbean poker has become one of the most popular new casino game in the last few years. Instead of playing against other players, as it is the case
in traditional poker, players compete one-on-one with the dealer. If you like poker, you will love Caribbean Poker! The game is short and quick,
quite similar to Blackjack.
The Caribbean poker game is played with a deck of 52 cards, which are shuffled after each round.
First, you have to place an
"Ante bet".
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You are then dealt a hand of five cards-all of them face up.
The dealer also receives five cards; four cards dealt face down and one card face up.
In Caribbean poker, the player and the dealer compare hands formed form their five cards.
No additional cards are dealt.
When you have looked at your cards and the dealer's up card, you must decide whether to challenge the dealer's hand with a bet or to surrender.
If you wish to challenge the dealer, you must place a bet by clicking the RAISE button. The bet is always equal to twice the ante.
If you do not wish to challenge the dealer's hand, you have to press FOLD and lose your ante.
When you receive a good hand, you will naturally wish to place a bet to challenge the dealer's hand. When the bet has been placed,
the dealer reveals his four remaining cards and the hands are compared.
The Dealer Must Qualify
In Caribbean poker, the dealer's hand must contain at least one ace and one king in order to qualify.
If the dealer's hand does not qualify,
you receive 1 to 1 on your ante and your bet is returned to you without winnings.
If the dealer's hand does qualify with a value of at least one
ace + one king, the best hand wins.
Your winning hand receives 1 to 1 on the ante plus the winnings on your bet, which are calculated according to
the winnings table.
For example, if the ante was $2 and you made a $2 call wager, you would receive $6 back.
However, if the dealer does
determine he has at least an Ace/King combo in his hand, he will reveal his cards for a Showdown against the player.
If the dealer has a higher
ranked hand than the player, then the player forfeits all money placed into the pot.
If you have a higher ranked hand, you win the wager
back plus the payoff odds corresponding to it, as well as even money profit on the original ante.
For example, if you won a hand with a $2 ante and a $2 call
wager on a 4 to 1 payoff, you would receive double the ante:
$4 + 4 times the total wager: $16 = $20, on a $4 investment.
Push
When the dealer and the player receive poker hands of equal value (i.e. a push game), both the ante and the bet are returned to the player.
Caribbean Poker Payouts table:
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| Hand |
Pays |
Specifications |
| Royal flush |
100 to 1 |
Ten, Jack, Queen, King, Ace of the same suite. |
| Straight Flush |
50 to 1 |
Five cards in numeric sequence of the same suit. |
| Four of a Kind |
20 to 1 |
Four cards of the same value. |
| Full House |
7 to 1 |
Three of a kind in addition to any Pair. |
| Flush |
5 to 1 |
Five cards of the same suit of any value. |
| Straight |
4 to 1 |
Five cards in numerical sequence of different suits. |
| Three of a Kind |
3 to 1 |
Three cards of the same value. |
| Two pairs |
2 to 1 |
Two sets of two cards of the same value. |
| One pair |
1 to 1 |
Two cards of the same value. |
| Nothing |
1 to 1 |
Five cards of different values. |
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Caribbean Strategies:
Basic Strategy
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.
Simply put, the basic strategy in Caribbean Poker is to Raise on A-K-J-8-3 or better and Fold otherwise.
That is called the "Beacon hand" and
it's the lowest break-even hand in the game. While this won't make you a long-term winner, it will help slow your losses.
It's the paying hands,
a pair or better, that will net you the good wins.
Trouble is that the dealer must qualify (A-K) in order for you to get the real payoffs and
those opportunities are annoyingly infrequent in Caribbean Poker.
If you've spent any time looking around, you'll know that there are many varieties and variations of this strategy. Using them will help you
shave the house edge by teeny amounts, but they're hardly worth the effort. Even if you played the mathematically optimal strategy you'd only
improve over the basic strategy by a few tenths of a point.
Is it worth it? On paper maybe, but the bottom line is that you're playing a losing
game so getting deep into it in order to shave a couple tenths is an effort of dubious worth.
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.
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