Caribbean Stud Strategy Made Simple

When it comes to learning how to play casino poker games well, learning the correct Caribbean Stud strategy may be the easiest place to start. This is because it breaks things down on a fundamental level where it’s easy to figure out exactly what you should be looking to accomplish without a lot of extra bets or options that can over-complicate things and make it more difficult to learn what to do. However, it’s also a very popular mobile casino game as well.

In what follows, we’re going to break down the underlying functionality of this game and what you can do about learning to play it better.

The First Thing to Know About Caribbean Stud Strategy

The basic idea here is that the dealer has four cards down and one card up while you have all five of your cards up. You have to decide whether to fold or raise and how well you do in this title will depend completely on how well you make this one decision. The six cards that you can see (including the one that is not your own) are the only information that you have to go on. Some people completely ignore this because they take it for granted, but it gives you a road map on exactly how to play.

Along the lines, the first thing about strategy for this game that you need to know is that the cards tell you everything, and here’s a simple example.

If you have a pair or better in your hand as far as poker hand rankings go, then you should always raise. Along similar lines, if you have a high card hand of -high or worse, you should always fold. This shows you how the majority of hands in this game can be played perfectly by simply paying attention to the cards available to you.

The Most Difficult Hands to Play

What you’ll notice is that we didn’t say anything about high card hands with -high, and this is because they are the most difficult hands to play. You have to pay a lot of attention here to the three remaining cards in your hand and the dealer’s card that’s showing to make the best decisions.

If the dealer’s up-card is anything but an or a , and it matches one of your cards, then you should raise. This is because having one of the dealer’s cards makes it less likely that they have a pair, and the fact that it’s not an A or a K means that they’re less likely to have a better -high hand than you.

However, if the dealer’s up-card is an or a , then you should raise if you have a or a . The reason for this is that you simply have a statistical advantage in this scenario to have the best hand often enough that raising will turn a profit.

Finally, we have scenarios where the dealer’s up-card is not an or a , but it also does not match any of your cards. You should almost always fold in these spots, but there are some fringe cases where it’s okay to raise. These fringe cases have two requirements. First, you need to have a in your hand to make -high. Second, the dealer’s up-card cannot be higher than more than one of your own cards. If you meet both of these requirements, then you can go ahead and raise profitably almost always.

The Elements of Strategy Combined

There are two major elements of a Caribbean Stud strategy. The first is learning how to play most hands with a simple raise/fold approach. The second element is learning how to play the more difficult minority of hands based on the three main cases that we laid out above. If you learn how to do this, then you’ll be able to really get the best payout available on one of the most popular table games out there today. Visit our poker guide section to learn how to play variations of this game.