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How to Play Caribbean Stud Poker

Caribbean Stud is a surprisingly addictive table game that combines some of the best elements of Blackjack, Video Poker and 5-Card Stud. For table gamers and poker addicts alike, Caribbean Stud is a fun and exciting way to gamble.

The Basics

Being a table game, Caribbean Stud is played against the house, you vs. the dealer. You start out like in any table game by laying out a bet, called an “ante” for all you poker fans.

You are each dealt five cards face down, except the dealer’s last card is turned face up. You then have to look at your hand and the dealer’s face-up card, and decide if you think you have the best 5-card poker hand. Just like in Blackjack, you only get to see one card, but in Caribbean Stud you have to deal with the dealer’s 4 facedown cards as well, so think about that when determining the quality of your hand.

If you decide to keep your hand, your only choice is to raise. That’s right, no flat calling. You have to either raise by an amount of 2x your ante, or lay your cards down. Because the raise must be 2x your ante, the limit to how much you can wager for your ante is equal to one third of your total chip stack.

For example, if you had a chip stack of $1000, the most you could ante would be $333, allowing you to make a $666 (ooooohhh, creepy) raise to stay in after you have your cards.

If you decide to raise and stay in, you and the dealer both turn over your cards. You win money when your hand is better than the dealer’s, but you can’t make big money unless you beat a dealer’s hand that qualifies.

Qualifying

For a dealer’s hand to qualify, it must have an Ace and King or better. Now that doesn’t mean Ace or King, it means the dealer must have high card Ace with a King kicker or a better poker hand. So AK432 would qualify, while AQJT9 would not.

If the dealer’s hand does not qualify, then you make a profit of just your ante, and receive your raise back as a push regardless of if your hand is actually better. Back to the $1000 example with the $333 ante, if you raised $666 and the dealer didn’t qualify, you would double up your ante and just take your $666 raise back into your stack, leaving you with $1,333, no matter what your hand was.

When the dealer’s hand does qualify is when things get exciting, assuming you still win. The better your hand is, the more money you make if you beat the dealer.

Payout

Payouts look something like this:

Let’s look at a simpler example than the one we’ve been using. Let’s say your chip stack is $300 and you bet a $100 ante. You are lucky enough to get Four of a Kind. You happily raise your remaining $200 and the dealer turns over two pair, sealing your victory. Not only do you double your $100 ante, but you also get 20:1 odds on your $200 raise giving you an additional $4000, making your stack now a sizable $4400.

But what if the dealer’s hand didn’t qualify…

Progressive Jackpot

You’d be pretty angry right? I know I would. Fortunately the game designers thought of that, and put in a Progressive Jackpot. At the start of each betting round you can put a $1 bet in the Progressive Jackpot slot (shown below), and if you do, you can still make a lot of money on a good hand even when the dealer doesn’t qualify.

The Progressive Jackpot is essentially a side bet on the quality of your cards, regardless of what the dealer’s cards are. Progressives typically pay hands of Flush and above, so they’re great security for if the dealer doesn’t qualify, or more surprisingly, beats you.

Progressive payouts vary from casino to casino, but the below is a fairly common payout structure in the US:

Royal Flush – 100% of Progressive Meter
Straight Flush – 10% of Progressive Meter
Four of a Kind - $500
Full House - $100
Flush - $50

The Progressive Meter is usually shown on or near the table in casinos, and on the top of the screen in casinos. Look at the example below:

This player would normally be distraught after their hard-earned straight flush (Q-8 of clubs) only earned them double their ante. Fortunately, this player paid for the Progressive at the start of the hand, and is now entitled to 10% of the Progressive Meter, shown at the top of the screen, roughly $11,000. Straight Flushes and Royal Flushes are rare, but they can really bring in the big bucks when using the Progressive.

You Can Do It One-Handed... (You have to)

Yep, you can only play one hand at a time, sorry Blackjackers. Caribbean Stud is played with a single 52-card deck, and knowledge of any other cards gives players an unfair advantage. Although card counting and odds computing would make them game more interesting, it would also open up the house to potentially losing in the long-run, which is not what casinos want.

Give it a try!

Well, now that you know how to play, why not give it a try? You can hop right in a game for free, no sign-ups, right here at http://casino.bodoglife.com/free-caribbean-stud.jsp. Good Luck to you from here at Gambling City, your premier source for gambling news, rules, and strategy.