How to play
Three Street Stud is five-card poker against a pay table, not against a dealer. There’s no hand to beat. You start small, and the bet grows as you choose to see more cards, so the interesting part is deciding how much to put behind a hand that’s only half built.
You start with 1,000 virtual credits.
- Tap chips onto the Ante circle. The Ante is 10 to 100 in steps of 10. Because a hand can grow to ten times the Ante, you can only deal if you have that much in credits; the message under the table spells it out (“Ante 20; a hand can cost up to 200”). Clear and Rebet work as usual.
- Press Deal. Two cards come to you face up, and three community cards land face down above them.
- Now you make three decisions, one before each community card is turned. The buttons show the exact amounts:
- Fold: stop here. The Ante and any raises already made are lost.
- Raise the Ante amount (1×), or Raise three times the Ante (3×). The chips go on the next street circle (3rd, 4th, 5th) and one community card flips.
- Once all three community cards are up, your two cards plus the three shared ones form your hand, and every bet you made is paid at the same odds.
The deck is a single 52-card pack shuffled fresh for each hand.
Pay table
Paid on the Ante and on each raise.
| Hand | Pays |
|---|---|
| Royal flush | 500 to 1 |
| Straight flush | 100 to 1 |
| Four of a kind | 40 to 1 |
| Full house | 10 to 1 |
| Flush | 6 to 1 |
| Straight | 4 to 1 |
| Three of a kind | 3 to 1 |
| Two pair | 2 to 1 |
| Pair of jacks, queens, kings or aces | 1 to 1 |
| Pair of 6s to 10s | push |
A pair of 2s through 5s, or no pair at all, loses everything on the table. The push for middle pairs matters more than it looks: a pair of 8s doesn’t win, but it gets back the full stack you’ve raised.
Strategy
The game knows the best play for every situation and marks it: at every decision, one of the three buttons is highlighted as the recommended play. It’s computed exactly, by working through every card that could still come and every decision you’d face later, so following it is the optimal strategy.
You don’t need to memorise it, but the patterns are easy to learn. On the first decision, with just your two cards, it helps to count points: jacks through aces are worth 2, sixes through tens are worth 1, deuces through fives 0.
- Any pair: raise 3×. Even 2-2 is worth it, because the pair can still improve to trips or two pair, and a high pair already pays.
- 2 points or more: raise 1×. That covers any hand with a jack, queen, king or ace (A-2 included), and any two cards from 6 up, like 7-9 or 6-10.
- Fewer than 2 points: fold. Two small cards (3-4, 2-5), or one small card with a middle card (2-8, 4-10). The one oddity the calculation finds is 5-6 suited, which is just worth a 1× raise; 5-6 offsuit is a fold.
The later streets follow one idea. Once you’ve seen four cards, look at what the last card does on average. If you already have a paying pair or better, or a draw strong enough that the average result is a win, raise 3×. If it’s a loss but a small one, a 1× raise costs less than giving up what’s already in. If it’s a big loss (no pair, no draw), fold and keep the rest.
Played perfectly, the house edge is 4.91% of the Ante, worked out exactly across all 1,326 two-card starts. Since you’re usually raising, often several times, the edge per credit actually wagered is lower. The highlighted button already gets you there; no betting pattern across hands improves on it.
Two neighbours on this site work almost the opposite way. In Pull Back Poker you start with the full bet out and decide whether to take some back. Stud Showdown adds a dealer hand you have to beat.
If you enjoy Three Street Stud, try Tiger Six Baccarat or Titan Reels next.
