Question: How do you play three-card poker?

Saul in Durham, N.C.

Answer: Three-card poker is gaining rapidly in popularity, and you'll now find at least one table in most major casinos in Vegas. It's actually much more difficult to explain than it is to actually play, so if this overview doesn't help I recommend doing what I did -- watch a table for a while and you'll grasp it pretty quickly.

Basically, you get three cards with no draw, and you have to make the best poker hand out of those three cards. Possible combinations include straight flush (three sequential cards of the same suit), three of a kind (three queens), straight (three sequential cards of any suit), flush (three cards of the same suit), a pair (two queens), or, lacking any of those, you can still win if you have higher cards than the dealer.

There are actually two games in one on a three-card poker table -- pair-plus and ante-and-play. In pair-plus, you are betting only on your hand, not competing against anyone else at the table or the dealer. If you get a pair or better, you get a payoff according to the following table:

Straight Flush: 40 to 1
Three of a Kind: 30 to 1
Straight: 6 to 1
Flush: 4 to 1
Pair: 1 to 1

In ante-and-play, you are betting that your hand will be better than the dealer's but are not competing against anyone else. You place an ante bet, view your cards and then, if you decide you have a decent shot at it, you place a bet in the play area equal to your ante (if you bet $5 on ante, you bet another $5 to play). If you get lousy cards and don't want to go forward, you can fold and lose your ante bet and your pair-plus bet, if you made one.

At that point the dealer's hand is revealed -- he or she must have at least a single queen for the bets to count. If not, your ante and play bets are returned. If you beat the dealer's hand, you get a 1-to-1 payoff, but there is a bonus for a really good winning hand:

Straight Flush: 5 to 1
Three of a Kind: 4 to 1
Straight: 1 to 1

On the table, you'll see three betting areas -- the ante, the play, and the pair-plus. You can play only the pair-plus, or only the ante, or both. Place your chips in the areas you want to bet in.

Your three cards are dealt. If you only played pair-plus it doesn't matter what the dealer has -- you get paid according to the first table above if you have at least a pair. If you don't, you lose your bet.

If you played the ante bet, you must either fold or match the ante. The dealer's hand is revealed and payouts happen accordingly.

Each hand consists of one fresh 52-card deck.

Like I said, this game is actually a lot easier to play than it sounds and it's actually a lot of fun -- much more interactive and interesting than blackjack. Look for it on your next trip to Vegas.

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