Let It Ride Guide · Part 3Basic Strategy

Basic strategy means playing each hand according to the cards you can actually see. You do not know what cards other players are holding, and you do not know what remains in the dealer's deck. You simply make the best decision available from your three cards, and then make a completely new decision after the first community card appears.

That distinction is important. The first decision and the second decision are not one continuous wager. They are two separate choices, and learning to treat them that way is one of the biggest steps towards playing Let It Ride properly. There are a few unusual straight and straight-flush situations to remember, but nothing close to the number of decisions involved in a game such as blackjack.

Older Let It Ride books often gave players complicated instructions involving all kinds of straight draws, flush possibilities and combinations that looked impressive but were not actually worth keeping. Later mathematical work showed that many of those rules were unnecessary — some hands that appeared promising simply did not return enough money to justify leaving another wager on the table.

The result was good news for players. Correct basic strategy became easier to remember. You do not need to chase every straight draw, you do not keep every three-card flush, and you do not leave money in action simply because a hand looks attractive. There are only a limited number of situations where the mathematics says the wager is worth keeping. Learn those situations and most of the game takes care of itself.

Before discussing individual hands, it helps to think again about the three wagers sitting in front of you. They may all have the same value, but they do not behave the same way.

Your starting three cards can generally be placed into one of six categories, and the same basic categories can also be used when evaluating the four-card hand. Once you can recognise which group a hand belongs to, the decision becomes much easier.

A made hand already qualifies for a payout. In the standard main game that means you have at least a pair of tens. Examples include 10♣ 10♦ 4♠, Q♣ Q♥ 7♦, A♠ A♦ 3♣ and 7♣ 7♦ 7♠.

There is very little to think about. You are already guaranteed to finish with a winning hand, and nothing that appears on the community cards can remove the pair or three of a kind you already hold. Let it ride, keep Bet 1, keep Bet 2. The only question remaining is whether the community cards will improve the hand into something that pays more.

A low pair means a pair below tens — for example 2♠ 2♦ 6♣, 5♣ 5♥ K♦, 8♠ 8♣ J♥ or 9♦ 9♣ A♠. At first glance these hands can look excellent: you already have a pair, one more matching card gives you three of a kind, another card matching your odd card can give you two pair, and a second matching pair among the community cards can also improve the hand.

The problem is simple. A low pair by itself does not win. If the hand ends as a pair of nines or lower, you lose. That makes the first wager weaker than it may initially appear.

Suppose you hold 7♣ 7♦ A♠. You may feel better about it than 7♣ 7♦ 3♠, but for basic strategy purposes that high ace does not make the low pair a winning hand. The pair is still below tens. You cannot turn these three cards into a normal straight because two cards already share the same rank, and you cannot make a five-card flush from the starting hand unless later cards create an entirely different situation.

What matters is improving that low pair, and the odds are not strong enough to justify keeping the first wager solely because you started with it. So the basic instruction is: pull back Bet 1 with a low pair. Then wait for the first community card. If that card turns your hand into two pair or three of a kind, you now have a made hand and can leave Bet 2 in action. If the low pair remains only a low pair, pull Bet 2 back as well.

This is where players begin getting themselves into trouble. A straight draw looks tempting; cards sitting close together naturally feel as though they should be worth playing. But not all straight draws have the same value.

Two things matter. First, how many high cards you hold — a high card in Let It Ride generally means ten or higher, and that matters because pairing one of those cards may already create a qualifying pair. Second, how many different ways the cards can develop into a straight. Compare 4, 5, 6 with 4, 6, 8: both sets contain three different ranks, but the first group is far more useful for building a straight. To describe these situations properly, it helps to divide three-card straight draws into three groups.

Work through these six hands and count the completion routes before choosing. Remember that the ace counts low in A-2-3-4-5 and high in 10-J-Q-K-A. The full answers are listed further down the page in Practice Answers.

After all that explanation, here is the part that surprises many players. In normal basic strategy, most ordinary three-card straight draws are not enough to justify keeping Bet 1. Even an attractive hand can still be a pull-back.

After the dealer exposes one community card you have four visible cards and only one card remains to come. At this stage straight draws become much easier to classify. There are basically two important kinds: an outside straight draw and an inside straight draw.

Three cards of the same suit look good. Casino players like flush draws because the final payout is attractive, and a normal flush pays considerably more than a pair or two pair. But the payout alone does not tell you whether the first wager should remain in action.

Suppose your three starting cards are 2♣ 6♣ 9♣ — all clubs. You need both community cards to be clubs to finish with a flush, and that is not easy. Leaving Bet 1 in action simply because the first three cards share a suit is not enough. A regular three-card flush draw should generally be pulled back unless it also qualifies as a much stronger straight-flush situation.

A straight-flush draw combines two possibilities: the cards share the same suit and can also form part of a straight. For example, 4♣ 5♣ 6♣ has considerably more potential than 2♣ 6♣ 9♣. Both contain three clubs, but 4♣ 5♣ 6♣ also creates several ways of developing into straights and straight flushes.

Even so, not every three-card straight-flush draw deserves to keep Bet 1. The number of high cards still matters, and so does the number of ways the straight can be completed. A high card means a ten, jack, queen, king or ace.

Every other starting hand falls here: no made hand, no useful pair, no worthwhile flush draw, no qualifying straight-flush draw, nothing that meets the basic strategy conditions.

The four-card decision is considerably easier than the three-card decision. You have four visible cards and only one card remains. There are four main situations where Bet 2 should stay in action.

Here is the whole of basic strategy in one place. The left column is the decision you make from three cards, the right column is the decision you make once the first community card has been revealed.

These are the answers to the six practice hands above. If you can recognise them without stopping to calculate, you have the basic idea.

Suppose you begin with 4♣ 5♣ 6♣. You first classify the three cards: all suited, tightly connected — a strong straight-flush draw. Bet 1 stays. Then the dealer reveals a community card, and everything starts again from scratch.

Everything on this page reduces to two short lists. For the first decision, look only at the three-card hand. For the second decision, start again from the four cards in front of you.