If you’re looking to play Caribbean Stud at whichever online casino offers the best odds, there are a handful of choices out there.
- Caribbean Stud Poker The Caribbean Stud Poker rules and best strategy are easy to remember. Free games are available at some of the online casinos for practice. Caribbean Stud odds are a little heavy in favor of the house (about 5.2%), so look for the payouts that are shown below.
- Perhaps it's the casino atmosphere or the exotic names of the new table games, but feeling anxious walking up to a poker table is not abnormal. Don't be afraid. If you know the basics of five-card stud poker, you'll fit right in at the Caribbean Stud Poker table.
Caribbean stud offers a progressive jackpot payout, if you make the side bet. This bet is quite similar to the progressive used in Let It Ride (or it’s Microgaming equivalent, Poker Pursuit) these days, if you’re familiar with that game. The royal flush pays 100% of the progressive.
If you are from the US, be sure to read my 5Dimes Review, as 5Dimes not only offers the best odds, but also the fastest payouts.
Sample Bonus Breakdown
As covered on my strategy page, when playing optimally the house still has a 2.56% advantage. To calculate the house edge with a bonus we first take $8,000×0.0256=$204.80. This tells us that after making $8,000 of wagers on the ante + raise we’ll on average lose $4.80 of our own money plus the $200 bonus, for example. This is calculated as 4.80/8000=0.0006 which is a 0.06% advantage when playing with the $200 sign-up bonus.
Comparing Casinos
Below allow me to breakdown bonus offers of some of the top casinos.
InterCasino Bonus Compared
Caribbean Stud Poker Payouts Poker
At InterCasino a 100% up to $250 bonus is offered with a 15-times rollover. However, Caribbean Stud Poker clears at only 40% the normal rate. This means $18,750 rollover is required. If you manage to meet this rollover you’ll also get 1875 comp points which have a value of $18.75. So 18,750*0.0256=$480. If we deduct the $250 bonus plus the $18.75 earned from VIP points, our expected loss is 480-($250+$18.75)=$211.25. 211.25/18750=0.0113 – this means the house has a 1.13% advantage when playing at Cryptologic powered casinos, after the bonus has been taken into account.
888Casino Bonus Compared
888Casino offers a 100% up to $200 bonus and Caribbean Stud clears at only 20% the standard rate which brings the rollover to $30,000. It would be tough to meet this rollover before going broke, but if you manage to you’ll get an extra $30.00 back from their VIP program. So the edge is (30,000*0.0256)-($200+$30)/30,000=1.79%. As you can see this is a very difficult bonus to clear and you’ll likely lose your account balance before meeting the rollover.
32Red Bonus Compared
This is an interesting bonus due to how much fine print is involved. First off, the opening offer is deposit £100 and get £160.00 free. There’s a rollover requirement of 30-times the bonus amount only, but because Caribbean Stud Poker only counts for 50% the normal clear rate the rollover is actually 60-times. So here it is £160×60=£9,600. Furthermore the maximum bet allowed when playing with the bonus is £6.25; any additional amount does not count toward the rollover. Finally, the quirkiest term is that only the ante counts toward the play through requirements.
Calculating the house advantage was extremely confusing due to all the fine print mentioned above. The way I calculated it was at £6.00 per hand we need to play 1600 hands to clear the bonus. Using optimal strategy we’re going to raise 52.23% of the time. So about 836 of those times we’ll wager an additional £12 which totals $10,032 additional wagered. So we’re actually putting £9,600+£10,032=£19,632 into play. This game uses Microgaming software where the house advantage is 2.46% as opposed to the 2.56% standard, so, with £19,632 wagered the expected loss is £482.95 of which £160 was the bonus. The house advantage is £322.47/£19632=0.0164, which works out at 1.64%.
Sticky Bonus Warning
Rival Casinos offer some of the best odds in the industry, but when playing here I strongly advise avoiding the bonus. If you’re new to online gambling, or don’t understand just how profitable bonuses are for the operators, I strongly suggest reading the information contained in my article on Rival Gaming software. This will be an eye opener and help you realize what to look for when shopping odds and bonuses.
Best Odds with No Bonus
Caribbean Stud Poker Payouts Sites
If you’ve read through the Rival software page, you might decide bonuses are not worth it (something I agree with). In this case I suggest reading both my 5Dimes Review (US Players) and Pinnacle Sports Review (No US Players). These two websites are not at all well known for casino games, as they’re both sportsbooks geared towards savvy players. However, each offers casino games with a far lower house advantage that can be found anywhere else online, and this applies to Caribbean Stud Poker as well.
The Caribbean Stud Poker rules and best strategy are easy to remember. Free games are available at some of the online casinos for practice. Caribbean Stud odds are a little heavy in favor of the house (about 5.2%), so look for the payouts that are shown below. If you play the optional jackpot and catch a few more big poker hands than usual, you can win quite a bit of money in a short time. This is one of the more exciting table games.Caribbean Stud is a five card stud poker game played on a blackjack type table with a standard 52 card deck. The cards are normally dealt from a multi-deck 'shoe' or by an automatic shuffling machine that deals in groups of five card hands. Players try to beat the dealer with the best poker hand.
Each seat at the Caribbean Stud table has a player's layout and chip slot like the drawing at the right. The slot fixture has small lights that light up when a chip that has been placed in the slot is allowed to fall through for collection by the dealer. Always watch the lights to make sure your jackpot bet is indicated, before the hand is dealt. Sometimes they don't work properly and that could cost you a lot of money.
Caribbean Stud Poker Rules and How to Play Procedure
Before any cards are dealt, you place a bet in the 'ante' box in your table layout. This ante bet can be any amount within the posted table limits.
With each hand you may also play for the optional progressive jackpot. If you want to do this, you place a $1.00 chip in the chip slot in front of you. When all the players that want to play for the jackpot have their bets down, the dealer presses a button allowing all the $1.00 chips to drop through the slots for collection. The lights on your slot fixture are activated by the chip drop and stay illuminated until the hand is over to show that you made the jackpot bet.
The dealer then gives five cards, face down, to all the players and gives himself four down and one up. You then look at your cards and decide to either play or fold. If you choose to fold, you lose your ante bet. If you choose to play, you place double the amount of your ante in the 'bet' box. This is your 'call' bet.
| Poker Hand | Full Pay Call Bonus Table | Full Pay Jackpot Table |
|---|---|---|
| Royal Flush | 100 to 1 | 100% Total Jackpot |
| Straight Flush | 50 to 1 | 10% Total Jackpot |
| 4 of a Kind | 20 to 1 | $500 |
| Full House | 7 to 1 | $100 |
| Flush | 5 to 1 | $50 |
| Straight | 4 to 1 | - |
| Three of a Kind | 3 to 1 | - |
| 2 Pair | 2 to 1 | - |
| Pair or less | 1 to 1 | - |
If the player made the $1.00 jackpot bet and has a flush or higher, he or she receives payment for the hand, in accordance with the jackpot payout schedule. When players are eligible for jackpot payouts they must announce that they have a jackpot hand to the dealer, as soon as they see it and before the hand is over. This is to protect your hand from the dealer accidentally scooping it up and mixing it in with the dead cards. Protect this hand and never take it off the table or out of overhead camera sight. If you do, the casino has the right to enforce the game rules and not pay you for it. The progressive jackpot bet is a separate side game. The player wins whether he or she beats the dealer or not.
Caribbean Stud Poker Strategy and Tips
The percentage crunching experts will advise you not to play the jackpot game because the house advantage is too high. But I'll bet that even they will slip a coin in the jackpot slot when they think nobody is looking. Without the jackpot bet feature, the game of Caribbean Stud would soon be history. Just about everyone plays for the big progressive jackpot payouts.
The Progressive Jackpot
Actually the experts are sort of right when they complain about the jackpot odds, especially when the player is getting the common 50/75/100 payout and the progressive starts out at $5,000. But when you factor in a full pay schedule with some progressives reaching over $600,000 the picture starts to look pretty good for the player. With an average or near to average run of cards, you probably won't win at Caribbean Stud. However, if you are playing the progressive when the poker gods bless you with some unusually powerful hands or an unusually good run you can win a lot!
Optimal Caribbean Stud Poker Strategy
Always call bet when you have:
- A-K-J x x or higher
- A-K and the dealer's up-card denomination (for example you hold A-K-2-9-5 and the dealer's up card is a 5)
So to give you the best shot at some nice winnings follow these tips: look for full pay games, large progressive jackpots and always play the optimal strategy.