Lucky Seven Card is about as simple as a card game gets: one card is dealt from a freshly shuffled 52-card deck, and everything on the table is settled by it. The interest is in the betting layout. There are eleven ways to back that one card, each with its own price, and the seven sits at the centre of it all. Low and High each give back half the stake when a 7 turns up, and the 7 itself pays 11.5 to 1.
How to play
- Pick a chip and tap the bets you want. You can spread chips over several bets in the same round.
- Press Deal. One card is drawn from a full, newly shuffled deck.
- Bets are settled on that card, and the next round starts with a new shuffle.
Bets go in steps of 20 credits, from 20 to 1,000 on each spot, with up to 5,000 on the table in total. The odd step size is there so that the 0.95-to-1 colour payout always comes out in whole credits. Aces are low in this game: an Ace counts for the Low bet, and it also has its own spot.
The bets
| Bet | Wins on | Cards that win | Pays |
|---|---|---|---|
| Low A–6 | Ace, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 | 24 | 1 to 1 (half back on a 7) |
| High 8–K | 8, 9, 10, J, Q, K | 24 | 1 to 1 (half back on a 7) |
| Seven | any 7 | 4 | 11.5 to 1 |
| Red / Black | that colour | 26 | 0.95 to 1 |
| Clubs, Diamonds, Hearts or Spades | that suit | 13 | 2.8 to 1 |
| Picture J Q K | Jack, Queen or King | 12 | 3.2 to 1 |
| Ace | any Ace | 4 | 11.5 to 1 |
The exact returns
With one card from 52, each bet’s return can be counted in a line. Low, for example, wins double its stake on 24 cards, returns half on the 4 sevens, and loses on the other 24: (24 × 2 + 4 × 0.5) ÷ 52 = 96.15%.
| Bet | Return | House edge |
|---|---|---|
| Red / Black | 97.50% | 2.50% |
| Picture | 96.92% | 3.08% |
| Low, High, Seven, Ace | 96.15% | 3.85% |
| Any suit | 95.00% | 5.00% |
The colour bets carry the lowest edge on the table. Single suits carry the highest; 2.8 to 1 is less than the fair 3 to 1 for a card that comes up one time in four.
The role of the seven
The seven is the card that keeps Low and High from being simple coin flips. If it were treated as a loss for both, they would return only 92.3%. Giving half the stake back on a 7 lifts that to 96.15%. A 7 still costs you half of a Low or High bet, which is where the house edge on those two bets comes from.
The Seven bet itself is a straight 1 in 13 shot. It shares its price and its return with the Ace bet; the two are mathematically identical, just on different ranks.
Strategy
Red or Black is the cheapest bet. If you want the slowest drain on your credits, put chips on a colour.
Combining bets doesn’t change the edge. Each bet keeps its own return. Combinations make for more interesting single cards: High plus Picture plus Red, for instance, collects three times on a red Jack, Queen or King. The average result is still the sum of the individual edges.
Avoid suits if you care about the numbers. At 95% they are the most expensive bet on the layout. Picture cards pay a similar amount for almost the same chance and return nearly two points more.
Fresh deck, fresh odds. The deck is shuffled before every card. A run of reds or high cards changes nothing about the next deal; there is no card-counting angle here.
Combine Low and High only for fun. Betting both is a guaranteed loss of half one stake whenever a 7 comes up, and a break-even otherwise.
For another game built around the number seven, see Under Over Seven, which uses two dice instead of a card.
If you enjoy Lucky Seven Card, try Lucky Tree Baccarat or Macao next.
