Caribbean Stud Poker

1. The player places an ante and receives five cards face down. The dealer receives five cards, one of them face up.
2. The player either folds, losing the ante, or calls by placing a second bet of twice the ante.
3. The dealer reveals the hand. The dealer qualifies with ace-king or better.

If the dealer does not qualify, the ante pays 1:1 and the call bet is returned. If the dealer qualifies, the higher hand wins: a winning player is paid 1:1 on the ante and according to the paytable on the call bet, and a losing player loses both bets.

A common call-bet paytable is: one pair or less 1:1, two pair 2:1, three of a kind 3:1, straight 4:1, flush 5:1, full house 7:1, four of a kind 20:1, straight flush 50:1 and royal flush 100:1. With that table and correct play, the house edge is about 5.2% of the ante, or roughly 2.6% of the total amount bet. The jackpot side bet is a fixed small wager that pays a share of a progressive pool for a flush or better; its margin depends on the size of the pool and is usually much higher than the base game's.

Caribbean Stud is a steady, lower-volume table game that fills out a lobby rather than headlining it. Its commercial interest lies in the progressive jackpot: jackpot pools linked across many tables or operator brands grow faster and make the game more visible. For studios and RNG developers it is one of a family of poker-based house games, alongside Casino Hold'em and Three Card Poker, that share much of the same presentation and wallet logic.

A player antes 10, calls with a flush by betting 20 more, and the dealer qualifies with a pair of queens. The ante pays 10 and the call pays 5:1, or 100, for a total win of 110 on 30 staked.

• Progressive jackpot — how the side-bet pool grows.
• Casino Hold'em and Three Card Poker — other poker games played against the dealer.
• House edge — why paytables matter.

Compare the studios that offer these games in the live casino provider directory, or RNG versions from game developers.