Let It Ride Guide · Part 5Odds: Understanding the Numbers Behind the Game

Before getting into advanced strategy, it helps to understand what the numbers behind Let It Ride are actually telling you. Basic strategy does not require much calculation: you identify the hand, check the correct play, then either pull the wager back or let it ride.

Advanced strategy is different. There are hands where the answer is not obviously good or bad. Some wagers sit very close to break-even. Others become better or worse because of a single high card, another possible winning result or a different pay table.

You do not need to become a mathematician to understand any of this. But you should know what an out is, you should understand expected return, and you should understand the difference between a bet that wins frequently and one that is actually profitable. If numbers make your eyes glaze over you can survive without this chapter, but the next strategy sections will make considerably more sense if you understand the ideas first.

One of the unusual attractions of Let It Ride is that you can sometimes leave all three wagers on the table after you already know the hand is going to win. Suppose your first three cards are Q♣ Q♦ 6♠. You already have a pair of queens, and nothing the community cards can do will turn that into a losing hand, so all three wagers remain.

The $ wager cannot be withdrawn. You place it before seeing your cards and it remains in action regardless of what happens. If your cards are 2♣ 5♦ 8♥ you cannot recover it; if your cards are Q♣ Q♦ Q♥ you still cannot change it. The wager simply waits for the final result.

You will see different house-edge figures quoted for Let It Ride. Some older material placed the main game close to 4 percent. Other calculations using different conventions and strategy assumptions produce lower figures. The exact number depends on the pay table, the strategy being used and, importantly, what amount the house edge is being measured against.

That last point causes a lot of confusion. Suppose someone says “the house edge is 3 percent.” That does not mean you automatically lose $3 every time you sit down with $100, and it does not mean you will lose exactly 30 cents on every $10 hand. It means that across an enormous number of wagers the expected casino profit is approximately 3 percent of whatever betting base was used for that calculation.

Suppose, purely as an example, a game carries a 3 percent expected casino advantage on the amount actually wagered, and you put $1,000 of total action through it. The mathematical expected loss is straightforward arithmetic.

Expected return is the other side of the same coin. Instead of describing what the casino keeps, it describes how much of every wagered pound or dollar comes back to the player on average.

A pair of tens or better pays only even money on the standard main game. Two pair pays more, three of a kind more again, and then you move into much larger payouts: straight, flush, full house, four of a kind, straight flush, royal flush.

Suppose 100 players each sit down for a relatively short Let It Ride session. Most of them will not see a royal flush. Most will not see a straight flush. Many will never see four of a kind. One player who does hit something enormous can produce a result completely unlike everybody else's.

That big payout is still part of the mathematical return. It cannot be ignored simply because it is uncommon. Expected return includes everything: the boring losses, the ordinary pairs, the occasional straights, the rare full houses and the extremely rare top hands. Leave any of them out and you are calculating a different game.

Casino payout language can create unnecessary confusion. There is a real difference between 2 to 1 and 2 for 1. They sound almost identical. They are not.

The standard main-game pay table is usually discussed using “to 1” payouts. A pair of tens or better paying 1 to 1 means a $10 wager produces $10 profit plus the return of the original $10, so $20 total.

Where does basic strategy actually come from? Why should one three-card hand be kept while another is pulled back? Why is a suited hand sometimes not worth playing even though a flush pays more than a straight?

Because payout alone is only half of the calculation. You also need to know how often the hand will get there. A large payout attached to an extremely unlikely result can still be a poor wager; a smaller payout attached to many possible winning cards can be much better. For a three-card decision there are still two community cards to come, which means every possible pair of remaining cards needs to be considered.

Suppose your first three cards are 3♣ 3♦ 10♥. Over the next two cards you might make two pair, three of a kind, a full house or four of a kind, and you may also pair the ten.

The second betting decision is much easier. At this stage you know four cards — your original three plus the first community card — and only one card remains to be revealed.

Suppose you could replay the exact same four-card situation 48 times, wagering $1 each time, and across those 48 repetitions each of the 48 unseen cards appears exactly once as the final card. Your total cost would be 48 × $1 = $48. Now calculate how much money comes back from all 48 possible final cards.

Poker players use the word out for a card that improves the hand in the way you need. Suppose your four cards are 9♣ 10♦ J♥ Q♠ — an outside straight draw. An 8 completes 8-9-10-J-Q and a K completes 9-10-J-Q-K. There are four eights and four kings, so there are 4 + 4 = 8 straight outs.

Suppose instead your four cards are 6♣ 8♦ 9♥ 10♠. Only a 7 fills the gap, and there are four sevens, so you have 4 straight outs — half as many. That difference is enormous when the payout for both completed straights is the same.

Use 9♣ 10♦ J♥ Q♠ again. There are 48 unseen cards and eight of them complete a straight. The main-game straight pays 5 to 1 in profit under the standard schedule, so a winning $1 wager returns $6 in total ($5 profit + $1 stake).

Things become more interesting when your four-card hand contains cards of ten or higher. If one of your visible cards is a jack there are three other jacks remaining, and if the final card is one of them you make a pair of jacks — a winning Let It Ride hand. The same is true for every visible high-card rank.

Suppose you have 10♣ J♦ K♥ A♠: four high cards, with 3 remaining tens, 3 remaining jacks, 3 remaining kings and 3 remaining aces. That gives 12 cards capable of pairing one of your high ranks, and a pair of tens or better pays even money — each of those winning cards returns $2 on a $1 wager. So 12 × $2 = $24. Those high-card pairing possibilities add significant value to the hand.

Take 10♣ J♦ K♥ A♠. The missing queen completes the straight, and there are four queens. Each winning straight result returns $6 from a $1 wager under a 5-to-1 payout, so 4 × $6 = $24. Now count the cards that pair one of your four high ranks — there are 12 of those, each returning $2, so 12 × $2 = $24. Total: $24 + $24 = $48, and there are 48 possible final cards.

Compare 6♣ 7♦ 8♥ 9♠ with 10♣ J♦ K♥ A♠. The first needs a 5 or a 10, so it has eight straight outs contributing 8 × $6 = $48 — but every rank in it is below ten, so it has zero high-pair outs and $48 really is its whole total. The second has only four straight outs contributing $24, and adds 12 high-pair outs contributing another $24.

If additional cards become legitimately known because they are exposed as part of the game, those cards are no longer possible future community cards, and that changes the remaining deck. If an exposed card is one of the ranks you need to complete a straight you now have fewer outs. If exposed cards remove useless ranks instead, your remaining useful cards make up a slightly larger proportion of the unseen deck.

The arithmetic is simple; finding every winning possibility is the part that requires care. Use the same five steps every time.

The same principle works for the first decision, but now two cards are still coming, so you cannot simply count individual outs. A final result depends on combinations of two community cards. A hand might improve on the first community card and then improve again on the second.

Two apparently useless cards may combine to create a paying hand: a paired board may produce a full house, two suited cards may complete a flush, two connected ranks may finish a straight. The number of possible outcomes becomes much larger.

This is where software is far more useful than trying to do everything at the table — you want a strategy chart built from those calculations beforehand, not thousands of two-card combinations computed while the dealer waits.

The bonus wager works differently: there are no decisions after it has been placed, so its expected return comes almost entirely from how often each qualifying poker hand appears and how much the pay table awards for it.

Take a traditional bonus schedule such as the one below. This is a different example schedule from the one shown on the bonus bet page — that table pays nothing below a flush, while this one also pays for straights and three of a kind. Both are examples, and neither is a universal Let It Ride bonus table.

Imagine a particular bonus pay table where one qualifying hand occurs 2 percent of the time and returns $5 in total from a $1 wager.

Never assume every Let It Ride bonus wager is identical. One casino may offer a larger royal-flush prize, another may reduce the straight-flush payout, another may pay something for two pair, another may remove a lower qualifying hand entirely. Each change affects expected return.

Some pay tables concentrate more of the return in the rarest hands; others move money into hands that appear more frequently, which also changes volatility. Two bonus bets can have similar overall expected returns while producing very different playing experiences — one paying small amounts more often, the other producing long stretches of nothing followed by a very large hit.

The main game can also use different pay schedules. A common reference schedule runs Royal Flush 1,000:1 · Straight Flush 200:1 · Four of a Kind 50:1 · Full House 11:1 · Flush 8:1 · Straight 5:1 · Three of a Kind 3:1 · Two Pair 2:1 · Pair of Tens or Better 1:1. But alternative tables exist — one casino may improve the straight, another the flush, and a different schedule may reduce the largest prizes while increasing payouts for more common hands.

Pay-table design also changes the way the game feels. One schedule may devote more return to royal flushes, straight flushes and four of a kind, producing a more top-heavy game. Another may move some of that value into straights, flushes and full houses, which occur much more frequently, producing smaller wins more often.

Some casinos place a maximum payout on a single hand, and that can matter when the top pay-table result is extremely large. Suppose you wager $25 on Bet 1, $25 on Bet 2 and $25 on $ — $75 across the three main positions. Now suppose all three remain active and you hit a royal flush paying 1,000 to 1.

This is not something most low-stakes players need to worry about — at $5 per position the theoretical maximum royal-flush payout is much lower. But as the wager increases the cap can become relevant. With a $50,000 maximum and a royal flush paying 1,000 to 1 on each active wager, you want to know whether 3 × wager × 1,000 exceeds the table maximum.

A giant maximum payout looks impressive, and so does a giant bonus jackpot. Neither tells you whether the game is good. These are the things that actually determine its value.

Everything on this page compresses into a short list. An out is a remaining card that gives you a useful result. An outside straight normally has eight straight outs; an inside straight normally has four. High cards can create additional winning outs, because pairing a ten or better produces a qualifying hand.

Expected return measures the average amount returned across repeated identical wagers, and a 100 percent expected return is break-even, not guaranteed money. “To 1” and “for 1” payouts are not the same thing. Different pay tables can change both the house edge and the correct strategy. And rare large wins are still part of the mathematics, even if you personally do not see one during a session.