How to play
Acey Deucey, also known as In Between, asks one question per hand: will the next card land between the two you can see? This table uses a single 52-card deck, and all 52 cards go back in and get shuffled before every hand. Aces are always high, so the ranks run 2, 3, 4 up to 10, J, Q, K, A.
Pick a bet between 10 and 500 credits (in steps of 10) and press Deal. Two cards turn face up, and the game sorts the hand into one of three cases:
- Consecutive cards, such as a 9 and a 10. Nothing can fit between them, so the hand ends at once as a push and your bet comes back.
- A pair, such as two Queens. A third card is dealt straight away with no decision from you. A third Queen pays 11 to 1; any other card is a push.
- A gap. The game shows the spread, which is how many ranks sit strictly between the two cards. A 4 and a 9 have a spread of 4 (5, 6, 7, 8). The widest is 11, between a 2 and an Ace.
With a gap on the table you choose Raise or Call. Raise adds a second stake equal to your first one, doubling what’s riding; you need that many credits left over to use it. Call keeps the bet as it is. If the third card’s rank is strictly inside the gap, you win at the rate for that spread. A card matching either end, or one outside the range, loses everything you staked.
Pay table
| Spread | Pays | Winning cards out of 50 |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 5 to 1 | 4 (8%) |
| 2 | 4 to 1 | 8 (16%) |
| 3 | 2 to 1 | 12 (24%) |
| 4 to 11 | 1 to 1 | 16 to 44 (32% to 88%) |
| Pair, then three of a kind | 11 to 1 | 2 (4%) |
The third column is where single-deck play shows up. After two cards are out, exactly 50 remain, and every rank inside the gap still has all four of its cards. That makes the arithmetic clean: the chance of winning is the spread × 4 ÷ 50, or 8% per rank in the gap.
The odds, worked out
The first two cards can come out in 2,652 ordered ways, and we counted them all.
- A pair turns up 3 times in 51 (about 1 hand in 17). Only two cards of that rank are left, so trips land 4% of the time. Since the other 96% is a push, a pair is the one situation in the game where you’re ahead: it’s worth +0.44 of your bet on average.
- Consecutive cards come up in about 14.5% of hands.
- Spread 1 is the most common gap (13.3% of hands), and each wider spread is rarer. Spread 11 shows up only about once in 83 hands.
Here is what a plain Call is worth at each spread, per credit bet. A Raise doubles the number, good or bad.
| Spread | Call value |
|---|---|
| 1 | −0.52 |
| 2 | −0.20 |
| 3 | −0.28 |
| 4 | −0.36 |
| 5 | −0.20 |
| 6 | −0.04 |
| 7 | +0.12 |
| 9 | +0.44 |
| 11 | +0.76 |
Notice the dip at spread 4. It wins twice as often as spread 2 but pays only even money, so it’s actually one of the worst gaps to see.
Strategy
There’s one decision, and the rule is short: raise at a spread of 7 or more, call at 6 or less. From 7 up, more than half the deck wins and even money becomes a profitable bet, so you want twice as much on it. Below that, raising just doubles a loss. The Recommended tag in the game marks the same choice.
Played that way, the house edge is 3.16% of the starting bet. If you never raise, it climbs to 9.19%, because the only hands where the player is favoured are the wide spreads, and calling them leaves half their value on the table.
The bigger payouts for narrow spreads are priced well below the real odds. A spread of 1 at 5 to 1 would need about 1 win in 6 to break even; it gets 1 in 12.5.
Red Dog uses the same payouts with an eight-deck shoe instead of one deck, which nudges the edge down to 2.75%. If you’d rather call higher or lower on a single card, Hi-Lo is the closer cousin.
If you enjoy Acey Deucey, try All American Poker or American Roulette next.
