How to play
Pull Back Poker is a poker game with no dealer hand to beat: you only need a good five-card hand. The unusual part is that you can take back two of your three bets while the hand is played.
- Choose your bet. The same amount goes on all three spots, marked 1, 2 and $.
- Press Deal. You get three cards, and two community cards are dealt face down.
- Look at your cards and choose: pull back bet 1 (it’s returned to you) or keep it. The first community card is turned over.
- Choose again for bet 2. The second community card is turned over.
- Your three cards and the two community cards make your hand. Every bet still on the table is paid by the pay table. The $ bet always stays.
Pay table (paid on each remaining bet):
| Hand | Pays |
|---|---|
| Royal flush | 1,000 to 1 |
| Straight flush | 200 to 1 |
| Four of a kind | 50 to 1 |
| Full house | 11 to 1 |
| Flush | 8 to 1 |
| Straight | 5 to 1 |
| Three of a kind | 3 to 1 |
| Two pair | 2 to 1 |
| Pair of 10s or better | 1 to 1 |
A pair of 9s or lower, or no pair at all, loses every bet still on the table. The deck is shuffled before every hand.
Strategy
Each decision is simple to get right: keep the bet if, on average, it wins more than it loses from the cards still to come. We work that out exactly for your cards, counting every possible community card, and the game highlights the better choice.
A few rules of thumb that follow from it:
- Keep a bet with any hand that already pays: a pair of 10s or better, or three of a kind.
- Three cards to a royal flush (like A♥ K♥ Q♥) are worth keeping on the first bet.
- With four cards, keep a four-card flush. A low four-card straight open at both ends (like 5-6-7-8) is exactly break-even; the game pulls back.
- Pull back small pairs like 9-9 or 2-2 with nothing else: they need help to pay.
Played this way, the house edge is 3.51% of one bet, computed exactly over every possible deal. You keep bet 1 on only about 7% of hands and bet 2 on about 15%, so most hands end with just the $ bet at risk.
For a poker game against the dealer, try Stud Showdown or Hold’em Duel. To draw your own cards, try Video Poker.
If you enjoy Pull Back Poker, try Quad Down 21 or Raise 21 next.
