How to play
Six Card Poker is poker against the dealer with a twist: you and the dealer both get six cards and play the best five, and three of the dealer’s cards are face up before you decide.
- Bet the Ante. You can add the optional Aces Up side bet (10, 25 or 50).
- You get six cards face up. The dealer gets six: the first three face up, the other three face down.
- Fold, losing the Ante, or Play: a Play bet equal to your Ante.
- The dealer’s hidden cards are turned over. The dealer needs Ace-King high or better to qualify.
The Ante goes from 10 to 500 in steps of 10. To deal you need credits for the Play bet as well, so the table keeps the same amount again aside.
Who wins
Hands rank as in ordinary poker, using the best five of each player’s six cards. The sixth card never counts, not even to break a tie.
| Result | Ante | Play |
|---|---|---|
| You win, dealer qualifies | pays 1:1 | pays 1:1 |
| You win, dealer doesn’t qualify | returned | pays 1:1 |
| Tie | returned | returned |
| Dealer wins, dealer qualifies | lost | lost |
| Dealer wins without qualifying | returned | lost |
The last row can happen: the dealer doesn’t qualify with Ace-Queen high, but it still beats your King high.
Aces Up
The side bet pays on your best five, whatever the dealer has and even if you fold. A pair of aces or better wins.
| Your best five | Pays |
|---|---|
| Royal flush | 500:1 |
| Straight flush | 100:1 |
| Four of a kind | 30:1 |
| Full house | 10:1 |
| Flush | 8:1 |
| Straight | 6:1 |
| Three of a kind | 4:1 |
| Two pair | 2:1 |
| Pair of aces | 1:1 |
Six cards make big hands much more common than five: in 6 cards, two pair or better comes up about one hand in five.
The odds
Aces Up returns 96.70% of what you bet on it, a house edge of 3.30%. We worked this out exactly by counting all 20,358,520 possible six-card hands; the test that checks it runs on every build.
Ante and Play: there is no single figure, because it depends on when you fold. Playing the way the strategy hint plays, the house keeps about 1.3% of the Ante: our sample of 400,000 hands, each one valued exactly over every possible set of hidden dealer cards, gave 1.30% (give or take 0.15%). You play about 70% of hands.
Strategy
- Turn the hint on. The game’s hint is not a rule of thumb: for every hand it checks all 12,341 ways the dealer’s three hidden cards could fall, adds up what Play would win or lose, and compares that with folding. Following it is the best possible play.
- Ace-King is roughly the line. Most hands with a pair or better are worth playing. With no pair, Ace-King high is usually worth it, weaker high cards usually aren’t.
- Look at the dealer’s up cards. A pair or three to a flush among the dealer’s open cards makes your marginal hands worse. If the dealer already shows a pair higher than anything you can make, fold.
- Folding is not losing everything. A fold costs one Ante. Playing a hand that loses to a qualifying dealer costs two, so marginal hands need a real chance of winning.
- The side bet is optional. Aces Up pays often but keeps 3.30%; the main game with good play keeps much less.
If you enjoy Six Card Poker, try Sky Crash or Spark 21 next.
