About Caribbean Stud Poker

Caribbean Stud Poker is a popular casino table game which can be found in most casinos. The players each play against the dealer independently. Both the players and the dealer receive 5 cards each.

 

How to Play

In this game, there is one dealer and several players (up to seven). One deck of cards will be used in each game, and both the dealer and players will receive 5 cards each. The dealer will receive his cards last and he must open his last card for all players to see. The casino does not allow players to communicate with each other as knowing each other's cards will greatly reduce the house advantage.

 

 

Ante and Bet

Before receiving the cards, each player must place his stake at the Ante. After studying his cards, he must then decide whether to Fold or to Bet. If he decides to Bet, the stake at the Bet must be double of his stake at the Ante. If he folds, his stake at the Ante will be forfeited.

 

Dealer

One important rule of this game is that the dealer only plays if his cards consists of an Ace and a King, or higher (2 Pairs, 3 of a Kind, etc). This actually dramatically reduce the winning chances of the player in long run.

The dealer will only pay for the player's Ante if he does not have the condition stated earlier.

If the dealer has the condition stated (ie at least an Ace and a King), he will challenge the player's cards. The hierachy of the cards is the same as the standard poker. If the player wins, he will receive both the Ante and the Bet payout. The Bet payout is determined by the combination of the cards of the player (see picture below).

As long as the player wins the dealer's hand, he will receive the payout listed in the chart, regardless of the dealer's card combination. Eg. if the dealer has Three of a Kind whereas the player has Full House, the player will receive 7x his Bet even though Full House is only three levels higher than Three of a Kind.

 

Jackpot

The interesting part of this game is that in each game, beside the normal bet, the player can choose to pay a small token (amount set by the casino) in order to play for the jackpot. The jackpot is an amount accumulated through all the tables in that casino. The player will receive certain portion of the jackpot if he receives a "special hand" in his 5 cards (see picture below). The player will only win his Ante and Bet but not the jackpot if he chooses not to pay to play for the jackpot before each game.

Usually, the casino will set a minimum amount for the jackpot. This is because in an unlikely event of two players getting Royal Flush at about the same period, the one who gets it first will receive the full jackpot, and the second one will receive the minimum jackpot amount.

 

Strategy

As the table shows, the house edge (or advantage) is 5.2243%, which means for every $100 you bet, you can expect to lose $5.2243. Thus Caribbean stud poker is not a game which you can expect to win against the house in a long run.

 

Singapore Stud Poker

The Singapore MBS (Marina Bay Sands) casino offers another variation of the Caribbean Stud Poker known as the Singapore Stud Poker. The general rule is almost the same as the normal Stud Poker except for some minor changes to its jackpot rule:

1. Magic Card - The computer will randomly select a card in which if the player has that card in his five-card hand, he will receive a 5-time payout to his jackpot stake. The Magic Card play does not appear in every round.

2. Magic Player - The computer will randomly select a player on the table in which he will be paid 5-time his jackpot stake if he is selected. The Magic Player play does not appear in every round.

3. Magic Dealer - Same as the Magic Player, the player will be paid 5-time his jackpot stake if he selects the dealer to be picked by the computer.

 

Note that the player has the option to buy as many stakes as he wants for the jackpot (The normal Stud Poker only allows one stake at a time). He also has the option to bet the jackpot for player (himself) and/or dealer.

In MBS, each stake costs S$2.

 

 

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