Three Card Poker rules: how a hand runs
The game is played against the house with one 52-card deck. The dealer makes no choices: the dealer’s hand is played the same way every time, so there is nothing to read.
- Bet. Place an ante, a Pair Plus bet, or both. Casino Canberra, Crown Melbourne and the RTG online version allow Pair Plus on its own; the California cardroom rules allow it only with an ante. Some tables add a 6 Card Bonus.
- Deal. Three cards to you, three to the dealer face down.
- Decide (ante players only). Fold and lose the ante, or place a play bet exactly equal to the ante.
- Does the dealer qualify? The dealer “qualifies” with queen-high or better. If not, your ante pays even money (1 to 1) and your play bet is returned (a “push” or “stand off”).
- Showdown. If the dealer qualifies, the higher hand, ranked in the three-card order below, wins: ante and play both pay even money, or both lose. Equal hands push.
- Side payouts. The ante bonus pays on a straight or better whatever the dealer holds, but only if you made the play bet (details below). Pair Plus pays on a pair or better in your hand alone and loses on anything less, even if you beat the dealer (details below).
Worked example (made-up cards). You hold king-nine-four of mixed suits and play, so A$10 ante plus A$10 play. The dealer turns over jack-eight-two: jack-high does not qualify. Your ante wins A$10 and your play bet comes back. Had the dealer shown queen-ten-three, the dealer would qualify, your king-high would be the higher hand, and both bets would win A$10 each.
These steps are the rules of Casino Canberra, Crown Melbourne and the Reef Casino in Cairns. We did not collect the rules of casinos in other states. California cardrooms, where a player takes the dealer’s seat, settle the ante differently when the dealer does not qualify, so the ante and play results on this page do not apply to them; their Pair Plus table and bet rules appear below only for comparison.
Three-card hand ranking (it is not the five-card one)
With three cards there are 22,100 possible hands, and the order follows how rare each hand is:
- Straight flush: 48 hands
- Three of a kind: 52
- Straight: 720
- Flush: 1,096
- Pair: 3,744
- High card: 16,440
A straight ranks above a flush because with three cards it is rarer (720 hands against 1,096), the reverse of five-card poker. Aces play high or low in straights: A-K-Q is the highest, A-2-3 the lowest. There is no two pair, no full house and no four of a kind. The California rules add a “mini royal” (A-K-Q of one suit) above the straight flush, but only in their Pair Plus table; we have not read the hand order of any online table.
Strategy: queen-six-four
The whole strategy
- Play any hand of queen-six-four or better. That is: any pair or better; any ace-high or king-high hand; any queen-high hand where the second card is seven or higher; a queen-six where the third card is four or five.
- Fold anything lower: queen-six-three, queen-five-anything, jack-high, and below.
- The cut-off does not move with the ante bonus table: we found the same cut-off on the 5/4/1, 5/3/1, 4/3/1 and 3/2/1 tables (payouts for straight flush / three of a kind / straight, explained below) and with no bonus at all. It holds for tables where the dealer qualifies with a queen and the play bet equals the ante.
| Your three cards (mixed suits) | Decision |
|---|---|
| King-three-two | Play |
| Queen-seven-two | Play |
| Queen-six-five | Play |
| Queen-six-four | Play (the weakest hand worth playing) |
| Queen-six-three | Fold |
| Jack-ten-eight | Fold |
Why the cut-off sits there: for every hand we compared the average result of playing with the ante you lose by folding. From queen-six-four up, playing loses less than folding; from queen-six-three down, it loses more. A hand that weak is worth playing partly because a random dealer hand qualifies only 69.6% of the time; in the other 30% or so a played hand wins its ante whatever you hold.
The rule lowers your loss; it does not beat the house. Out of every 100 hands played this way you fold about 32.6, your ante wins about 44.9 (21.0 because the dealer did not qualify, 23.9 because you beat a qualifying dealer), you lose about 22.5 to a qualifying dealer, and about 0.07 are ties. Getting it wrong costs more: on the 5/4/1 ante bonus table explained below, playing every hand costs 7.65% of the ante and playing every queen-high hand costs 3.45%, against 3.37% for queen-six-four.
The ante bonus and what 3.37% means
The ante bonus is an extra payout on your ante for a straight, three of a kind or a straight flush. It is paid whatever the dealer holds, even if you lose the hand, but only if you made the play bet. A straight or better comes in 3.71% of hands (820 of 22,100). The bonus is paid from a paytable, the table of payouts printed on the casino table or in the game’s rules panel, written here as straight flush / three of a kind / straight. Crown Melbourne’s approved rules allow three ante bonus tables and say the one in use is shown on the table limit sign; Casino Canberra’s approved rules pay 4/3/1.
| Ante bonus table | Where we found it | House edge, % of the ante | % of ante and play together |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5/4/1 | Crown table A | 3.37% | 2.01% |
| 5/3/1 | Crown table B | 3.61% | 2.16% |
| 4/3/1 | Casino Canberra; Crown table C | 3.83% | 2.28% |
| No ante bonus | for comparison only | 8.66% | 5.17% |
How to read the numbers. “3.37% of the ante” means that for every A$100 you put up as antes, playing queen-six-four, you lose about A$3.37 on average, counting what you lose on play bets too. The last column divides the same loss by everything you stake on the ante and play together (the play bet goes in on about two hands in three), which is why it is smaller. The Reef Casino leaflet gives the same pair of figures, approximately 3.37% on the ante bet only and approximately 2.01% on the total bet, but does not print its bonus table, so which table Reef uses is our inference, not a fact. A 3/2/1 table did not appear in any of the rules we read.
Without the bonus the same game would cost 8.66% of the ante: the house collects folded antes and beaten play bets and gives part of that back on the rare straights and better. On an online table, look for the ante bonus row in the help or rules panel before your first hand.
Pair Plus: the paytable decides the edge
Pair Plus is a separate bet on your own three cards. It pays on a pair or better and loses on anything less; the dealer’s hand does not matter. Unlike the ante, there is no decision to make, so its cost is set entirely by its paytable, and paytables differ from table to table:
| Paytable | Straight flush | Three of a kind | Straight | Flush | Pair | House edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Crown table A | 40 | 30 | 6 | 4 | 1 | 2.32% |
| Crown table F | 35 | 33 | 6 | 4 | 1 | 2.70% |
| Crown table B | 40 | 25 | 6 | 4 | 1 | 3.49% |
| California (mini royal 200) | 40 | 30 | 6 | 3 | 1 | 4.38% |
| Crown table E | 35 | 25 | 6 | 4 | 1 | 4.58% |
| Crown table C | 40 | 30 | 5 | 4 | 1 | 5.57% |
| Crown table D; Casino Canberra | 40 | 30 | 6 | 3 | 1 | 7.28% |
Payouts are “to 1”; the house edge is a share of the Pair Plus bet. Compare the first and last rows: the only difference is the flush cell, 4 to 1 against 3 to 1. A flush comes in 4.96% of hands, about one in 20, so one unit on that cell moves the edge from 2.32% to 7.28%. The flush cell alone does not set the price, though: Crown table C also pays 4 to 1 for a flush but costs 5.57%, because its straight pays 5 instead of 6, and the California table pays 3 to 1 for a flush but costs 4.38%, because it adds a mini royal at 200 to 1. On the Casino Canberra table, Pair Plus at 7.28% of the bet costs about twice the ante-and-play game on the same table (3.83% of the ante). Which table a given Crown table uses is shown on its sign; we have not read the Pair Plus table of any online game, so compare the whole paytable in its rules panel with the rows above, not one cell.
Two table rules change what you can do with Pair Plus. Pair Plus without an ante: allowed at Casino Canberra, Crown Melbourne and in RTG’s online Tri Card Poker; not allowed in California; the Reef leaflet starts with the ante and calls Pair Plus optional, without saying either way. Pair Plus when you fold: the Reef leaflet says that if you fold you forfeit both the ante and any Pair Plus bet; California also takes it; at Casino Canberra and Crown you lose it too, unless you choose to fold the ante but play the Pair Plus, which their rules allow: the dealer then takes your ante, and your Pair Plus stays in and is settled on your own three cards. For a queen-six-four player this costs nothing: every hand you fold is high card, and Pair Plus loses on high card anyway. We have not read the Queensland state rule itself.
The 6 Card Bonus, where offered, pays on the best five-card hand from your three cards and the dealer’s three. Crown’s five 6 Card Bonus tables cost from 6.74% to 22.33% of the bet; the Victorian regulator approved the bet for Crown in 2020. We could not read the payout table of the live online version, so we give no figure for it.
What an hour costs
Cost of an hour = hands per hour × bet × house edge of that bet. We have no source for the pace of play, so the examples assume 60 hands an hour and A$10 on each bet. The result is an average expected loss, not what any one session will bring.
- Ante and play, queen-six-four: about A$20 an hour on a 5/4/1 ante bonus table (60 × A$10 × 3.37%), about A$23 on 4/3/1 (3.83%).
- Pair Plus: about A$14 an hour on Crown table A (40/30/6/4/1, 2.32%), about A$33 on Crown table C (40/30/5/4/1, 5.57%), about A$44 on Casino Canberra and Crown table D (40/30/6/3/1, 7.28%).
- Both bets on the Casino Canberra tables (4/3/1 ante bonus, flush 3 to 1): about A$67 an hour.
A 40-to-1 straight flush on a A$10 Pair Plus bet pays A$400. It comes in 48 hands of 22,100, about once in 460 hands; the paytable on your table decides how much you pay on average while you wait for it.
Where 3 Card Poker is dealt online, and the law in Australia
What we saw is a list of games: the “lobby” each casino site sends to its own page without a login. A game in a lobby does not show that the table opens for an Australian account, or that the casino accepts Australian players; we did not check either here. Online the game comes in two forms: RNG tables, where software deals the cards, and live-dealer tables streamed from a studio.
- Live tables (25 October 2026). We read 11 casino lobbies on the SoftSwiss platform (BitStarz, CasinoChan, Casinonic, Dundee, Golden Crown, King Billy, PlayAmo, Queen Spins, Ricky, Spinago, Woo). From an Australian IP address, Evolution’s live game was in none of them. From a German IP address the same day it was in all 11, listed as “Three Card Poker”, and 6 of them also listed “Triple Card Poker” from Evolution.
- RNG tables, same lobbies, same day. “Triple Edge Poker (Three Card Poker)” from Nucleus at CasinoChan, Golden Crown, King Billy, PlayAmo and Woo; “Three Card Poker” from Urgent Games at CasinoChan, Casinonic, Dundee, PlayAmo and Woo. A search for “card poker” found neither at BitStarz, Queen Spins, Ricky or Spinago, which is not proof they have none.
- Realtime Gaming (RTG) sites. RTG calls the game Tri Card Poker. On 25 October Shazam listed it and Triple Edge Poker; Rich Palms and Lucky Tiger showed Triple Edge Poker in the category we read. On 23 October Fair Go, Ozwin and PlayCroco listed Tri Card Poker.
- Other lobbies (23 October 2026). Grand Rush listed “3 Card Poker” from Dragon Gaming; Ignition listed “Classic Tri Card Poker”.
How bonus wagering counts it (terms read from an Australian IP address on 23 October 2026). A wagering requirement is the total you must bet before a bonus, and what you win with it, can be withdrawn. A game’s percentage is the share of each bet that counts towards that total: at 5%, every A$100 you bet at this table counts as A$5; at 50%, as A$50; a game that “will not count” adds nothing. Grand Rush lists “Three Card Poker: 50%”, but also says “New players may not use match offers on their first three deposits on video poker or table games. Breach may void withdrawals.” Fair Go’s terms say wagering on “Blackjack, Video Poker, Craps, American Roulette, Baccarat and other table games and non-pokies games, will not count towards this wagering requirement”; Ozwin’s say the same, adding “unless specifically stated”, and that if an excluded game is played before the wagering is complete, “the casino reserves the right to void all winnings and reserve the right to close the account”. Lucky Tiger, Shazam and Rich Palms do not list Tri Card Poker among their banned games and say “Every $1 wagered on Card Games contributes $0.20”; that the game counts as a card game there is our reading. Golden Crown, King Billy, Woo, PlayAmo, CasinoChan, Dundee, Casinonic, Ricky and Queen Spins give 5% for “table games” or “Poker”, and BitStarz says table games “typically contribute 5%”; that this covers Three Card Poker is also our reading, as those terms do not name it. Some of these terms also list games that cannot be played with bonus money at all, so read that list as well as the percentage.
The law in Australia
The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) says the Interactive Gambling Act 2001 “makes it illegal for gambling providers to offer some online services to people in Australia” and lists online casinos among them. Of such services ACMA says: “You might be able to access them, but they will not give you the same customer protection as a licensed service.” Our guide to online casino law in Australia covers this in detail. The poker card games hub compares Three Card Poker with Caribbean Stud, Pai Gow and the hold'em variants; live casino games covers live tables in general.
FAQ
How do you play 3 card poker?
Bet an ante, Pair Plus or both (some tables require an ante), receive three cards, and if you bet the ante either fold or add a play bet equal to it. The dealer needs queen-high to qualify; if not, the ante pays even money and the play bet is returned. If the dealer qualifies, the higher three-card hand wins both bets. A straight or better also earns the ante bonus if you played, and Pair Plus pays on a pair or better whatever the dealer holds.
What hands beat what in 3 card poker?
Straight flush, three of a kind, straight, flush, pair, high card. A straight beats a flush because with three cards it is rarer (720 hands against 1,096).
What is the best strategy for three card poker?
Play queen-six-four or better and fold everything else, on tables where the dealer qualifies with a queen and the play bet equals the ante. It lowers the house edge to 3.37% of the ante on a 5/4/1 ante bonus table (3.83% on 4/3/1); it does not beat the house.
What are the odds of winning a hand of Three Card Poker?
Playing queen-six-four, out of 100 hands your ante wins about 45, you fold about 33 and lose about 22 to a qualifying dealer; ties are rare (about 0.07). The house still keeps 3.37–3.83% of the ante, depending on the ante bonus table.
Is Pair Plus a good bet?
It depends on the whole paytable. On the tables we read it costs from 2.32% of the bet (Crown table A, flush 4 to 1) to 7.28% (Casino Canberra and Crown table D, flush 3 to 1), about twice the ante game on the same Canberra table. A flush at 4 to 1 is not enough on its own: Crown table C pays that too and costs 5.57%. Compare every payout in the table’s rules panel before betting.
What is the house edge in three card poker?
On the ante and play with queen-six-four: 3.37%, 3.61% or 3.83% of the ante on the 5/4/1, 5/3/1 and 4/3/1 ante bonus tables. Pair Plus: 2.32–7.28% of the bet by paytable. 6 Card Bonus: 6.74–22.33% on Crown’s five tables.
What is another name for 3 Card Poker?
Online lobbies list it as Tri Card Poker (RTG), Triple Edge Poker (Nucleus) and 3 Card Poker; Evolution’s live game appears as Three Card Poker and Triple Card Poker, both seen only from a German IP address, not from Australia. We have not checked that their rules and payouts are the same, so read each table’s rules panel.
Sources and method
- Rules (read 25 October 2026): Casino Control (3 Card Poker) Approval 2006 (No 1), NI2006-481, ACT, in force; Crown Melbourne, Three Card Poker Rules, version 5.1, approved by the VGCCC on 27 April 2022, and the Victorian Gambling and Casino Control Commission’s list of casino games and rules; The Reef Hotel Casino, How To Play Three Card Poker, reprint January 2024; California Bureau of Gambling Control, Three Card Poker rules; RTG’s Tri Card Poker description in the Fair Go, Ozwin and PlayCroco lobbies (23 October 2026).
- Percentages (25 October 2026): our own script counted every one of the 22,100 player hands against every possible dealer hand under the rules above, and all 20,358,520 six-card sets for the 6 Card Bonus. They are not taken from any strategy website. Hourly costs are arithmetic with the stated assumption.
- Lobbies: SoftSwiss lobbies and the Shazam, Rich Palms and Lucky Tiger categories read 25 October 2026 from an Australian IP (Melbourne exit) and, for comparison, from Germany; Fair Go, Ozwin, PlayCroco, Grand Rush and Ignition read 23 October 2026 from an Australian IP. No account, deposit or bet.
- Bonus terms: each casino’s own terms, read 23 October 2026 from an Australian IP.
- Law: ACMA, About the Interactive Gambling Act and Protect yourself from illegal gambling operators, read 23 October 2026.
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ACMA lists online casinos among the services the Interactive Gambling Act 2001 bans providers from offering to people in Australia. Gambling is a cost, not an income; you must be 18 or over. Free, confidential support is available 24/7 on 1800 858 858 through Gambling Help Online.