There is a small printed panel on the layout, usually to the left of the dealer, and almost nobody reads it. It is not decoration and it is not the rules. It is the price of the game, and it is not the same price at every table.
Walk any floor and you will find two Three Card Poker tables within sight of each other with different numbers printed on that panel. Same felt, same dealer, same shuffler, same cards. One of them will cost you roughly three and a half times what the other one does on exactly the same bet. Nobody hides this. It is printed in front of you in letters an inch high, and people sit down at the expensive one because it had a free seat.
What you are actually looking at
The panel lists what Pair Plus pays. Five numbers, in the same order every time: pair, flush, straight, three of a kind, straight flush. You will see them written as a run, like 1-4-6-30-40, and once you know that is what you are looking at you can read a table across a room.
Here is what the common ones cost. These are not estimates - they come from counting all 22,100 hands you can be dealt, which is a small enough number that there is no need to guess about any of it.
| The sign | What it costs you |
|---|---|
| 1-4-6-30-40 | 2.32% |
| 1-3-6-30-40 | 7.28% |
| 1-3-6-25-40 | 8.45% |
The only difference between the first two is what a flush pays: four, or three. One number, one place on the sign. It more than triples the cost of the bet.
The difference between the best sign and the worst is bigger than the difference between playing well and playing badly. And it takes five seconds and no skill at all.
Why a flush is worth so much
Because you make one often. A flush comes along about one hand in twenty - 1,096 of the 22,100 - which is frequently enough that a single unit either way on its payout moves the whole bet. The straight flush pays forty and you will see one about once every four hundred and sixty hands; it is the number everybody looks at and the one that matters least.
This is worth sitting with for a moment, because it generalises. On any pay table, the top line is advertising. The line that decides what the bet costs is always the one you will actually hit.
The rooms that go the other way
Some tables improve the sign and take it back somewhere you are less likely to look. A California card room will turn one of the dealer's cards face up before you decide - which sounds like a gift, and is - and pay for it by removing the ante bonus altogether. That bonus is worth a shade over five per cent of your ante on every hand you play, whether you win the hand or lose it. It is the quietest five per cent on the table and it is gone.
Others charge you by the hand instead. Fifty cents, taken before a card comes out, at every table game in the state of Oklahoma. On a five dollar ante that is ten per cent of your bet - three times the house edge of the game itself - and it does not care whether you win, lose, fold, or how well you play. It is the one situation in this game where betting more is genuinely the cheaper option.
What to do about it
Before you sit down, do three things. They take about ten seconds together.
Read the Pair Plus panel. If a flush pays three rather than four, you are at the expensive version. If there is another table in sight, look at that one too.
Check there is an ante bonus. Straight, three of a kind, straight flush - it should be printed. If it is not, the table is taking something from you elsewhere, and it is worth knowing what.
Ask what the fee is. If the room charges per hand, the dealer will tell you straight away, and it changes what you should be betting.
None of this is advantage play and none of it beats the house. It is simply refusing to pay more than you have to for the same evening. Most people at that table are paying the higher price, and the only reason is that nobody ever told them there was a lower one.