Four Card Poker Strategy: When to Play 3×, 1× or Fold
In Four Card Poker you get five cards, the dealer gets six, and each side plays its best four. After looking at your cards you fold, losing the Ante, or make a Play bet of 1× to 3× the Ante. Two rules make the game unusual: the dealer always plays, with no qualifying hand, and ties go to you.
The strategy
- Play 3× with a pair of jacks or better, and with tens when your side cards are high.
- Play 1× with any smaller pair from 3s up.
- Fold a pair of 2s, and any hand without a pair, even ace-king high.
- Anything better than a pair (two pair, a straight, a flush, trips) plays 3×.
Why it is never 2×
Every Play bet wins or loses the same way as the Ante, so the value of playing grows in a straight line with the size of the bet. If a hand is worth playing at all, it is worth either the minimum (when it is still an underdog, but losing less than a fold) or the maximum (when it is a favourite). The middle option is never the best.
Every pair, exactly
Expected result per unit of Ante, played the best way:
| Pair | With small side cards | With A-K side cards |
|---|---|---|
| Aces | 3× (+1.041) | 3× (+1.078) |
| Kings | 3× (+0.744) | 3× (+0.905) |
| Queens | 3× (+0.480) | 3× (+0.756) |
| Jacks | 3× (+0.207) | 3× (+0.483) |
| 10s | 1× (-0.050) | 3× (+0.189) |
| 9s | 1× (-0.199) | 1× (-0.053) |
| 8s | 1× (-0.285) | 1× (-0.134) |
| 7s | 1× (-0.433) | 1× (-0.279) |
| 6s | 1× (-0.580) | 1× (-0.423) |
| 5s | 1× (-0.658) | 1× (-0.564) |
| 4s | 1× (-0.805) | 1× (-0.708) |
| 3s | 1× (-0.967) | 1× (-0.871) |
| 2s | Fold (-1.000) | Fold (-1.000) |
Small side cards here are 8-5-2 (9-6-2 with 5s and 8s, 8-5-3 with 2s); A-K side cards come with an 8 (a 9 with 8s), so none of these hands hides a straight. Each line is a full calculation against all 10,737,573 six-card hands the dealer could hold.
The Ante bonus
Three of a kind or better also collects an Ante bonus whatever the dealer has: 2 to 1 for trips, 20 to 1 for a straight flush and 25 to 1 for four of a kind. With this strategy the house keeps 2.79% of each Ante (the Wizard of Odds' figure for this pay table).
Practise it until it's automatic
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