How to play
Stud Showdown is poker with no draw and no bluffing. You get five cards, the dealer gets five, and the better hand wins. Your one real decision comes after you’ve seen your whole hand and a single dealer card.
- Put down an Ante. Tap chips (10, 50 or 100) onto the Ante spot; the Ante can be anything from 10 to 300 in steps of 10. Clear removes it and Rebet repeats your last one.
- Press Deal. You need credits for three times the Ante at this point, because a raise costs another two Antes. A single 52-card deck is shuffled for every hand.
- Your five cards come face up. The dealer gets five, with only the first one turned over.
- Choose Raise (adds twice the Ante to the Raise spot) or Fold (you give up the Ante and the hand ends).
- If you raise, the dealer’s hand is revealed and settled:
| What happens | Ante | Raise |
|---|---|---|
| Dealer has less than Ace-King high (doesn’t qualify) | wins 1:1 | returned |
| Dealer qualifies, your hand is better | wins 1:1 | paid from the table below |
| Dealer qualifies, dealer’s hand is better | lost | lost |
| Exactly equal hands | returned | returned |
“Ace-King or better” means the dealer needs at least a pair, or no pair but an Ace and a King among the five cards.
Raise pay table
| Your hand | Raise pays |
|---|---|
| Royal flush | 100:1 |
| Straight flush | 50:1 |
| Four of a kind | 20:1 |
| Full house | 7:1 |
| Flush | 5:1 |
| Straight | 4:1 |
| Three of a kind | 3:1 |
| Two pair | 2:1 |
| Pair or less | 1:1 |
Here’s what that means in credits. With a 100-credit Ante and a 200-credit Raise, a winning full house returns 100 for the Ante plus 1,400 on the Raise. The same full house against a dealer holding Queen-high pays only the 100 on the Ante, with the 200 Raise handed back. The bonus table only kicks in when the dealer has a hand to beat.
There’s no side bet and no progressive jackpot in this version, just the two spots.
Strategy
You can’t draw and you can’t change the dealer’s cards, so the whole game is the raise-or-fold call. A simple rule set gets close to the best play:
- Raise with any pair or better. Even a pair of twos wins often enough to be worth the extra two Antes.
- Fold anything weaker than Ace-King high. Without an Ace and a King you can’t beat a qualifying dealer, so raising only adds to the loss.
- With Ace-King high and no pair, look at the dealer’s card. Raise if one of your cards matches its rank. Also raise if the dealer shows a Queen or lower and you hold a Queen or a Jack. Otherwise fold.
That’s the same rule the game’s own computer player follows. Playing it, you fold a little under half of your hands, and that’s correct: most unpaired hands lose less by surrendering the Ante than by putting two more Antes behind them.
What the strategy can’t fix is the house edge. With this pay table, good play still costs a little over 5% of the Ante per hand on average, which works out to roughly 2.5% of everything you put on the table. Raising every hand is noticeably worse.
The most common surprise for new players is a strong hand that gets paid 1:1. It isn’t bad luck in any special sense; the dealer simply failed to qualify, which happens on a large share of hands. When it does, your Ante still wins and nothing is lost.
How it differs from other dealer games
In Three-Card Challenge each side holds three cards and the decisions come faster. Hold’em Duel uses shared community cards instead of five private ones. Here, five cards each and one visible dealer card are all the information you get.
If you enjoy Stud Showdown, try Stud Sit & Go or Sugar Cluster next.
