Let It Ride — analysis and

Last Update: Jan 31, 2011

Rules

Play in Let It Ride starts with each player making three bets of equal size. Then the dealer gives every player three cards, and two community cards are placed face down. After seeing their first three cards each player has the choice to take one of their three bets back or to "let it ride" and leave it out. Then the dealer turns over one of the two community cards. Each player then has the option to pull out another bet or "let it ride." The player may leave their bet in or take it out the second time regardless of their first decision. Finally the second community card is flipped and the players are paid according to one of the following five pay tables.

Pay Table Comments

Pay Table 1: Standard Pay Table, in use at the vast majority of U.S. casinos.
Pay Table 2: Seen at the Argosy Casino.
Pay Table 3: Seen at Isle of Capri casino in Black Hawk, Colorado.
Pay Table 4: Seen at the Royal Swazi casino in Swaziland, Africa.
Pay Table 5: Reported to be in use in some casinos in Oregon and Washington.
Pay Table 6: Seen in video Let It Ride. In the video version all pays are listed one greater than above, but are on a "for one" basis.

Aggregate Payout Warning:

The table will probably have a maximum payout. At Casino Niagara in Niagara Falls the maximum aggregate payout is $75,000 per round. As a result the player should not bet more than the maximum payout divided by 3000. Any bet above this quotient will not pay the full odds on a royal flush, thus increasing the house edge.

Strategy

The following strategy is for the standard pay table 1, and is also applicable for pay tables 3 and 6.

With three cards you should only "let it ride" if you have:

• Any paying hand (tens or better, three of a kind)
• Any three to a royal flush
• Three suited cards in a row except 2-3-4, and ace-2-3
• Three to a straight flush, spread 4, with at least one high card (ten or greater)
• Three to a straight flush, spread 5, with at least two high cards

With four cards you should only "let it ride" if you have:

• Any paying hand (tens or better, two pair, three of a kind)
• Any four cards of the same suit
• Any four to an outside straight with at least one high card
• Any four to an outside straight with no high cards (zero house edge)
• Any four to an inside straight with 4 high cards (zero house edge)

A lot of people have asked me what I mean by "inside straight", "outside straight", "spread 4", and "spread 5."An inside straight is one in which an 'inside' card is missing, such as (4,5,7,8). An outside straight is one in which an outside card is missing, such as (4,5,6,7). Outside straights are much better because there are 8 cards that can complete them as opposed to 4 for an inside straight. Spread4 means that the cards in question span 4 ranks in a row,for example a (5,6,8). Spread 5 means the cards in question span 5 ranks, for example a (5,7,9).

House Edge

The following six return tables show how often the player will get each hand on each bet, under optimal strategy, and assuming player chooses to "let it ride" on break-even plays. In each table the lower right cell is the overall return, defined as the ratio of the expected win to a single bet. For example, the first return table shows a return of -3.51%, or a house edge of +3.51%. So if the player made three initial bets of $10 each then the player could expect to lose $10×0.0351 = 35.1 cents on average per hand.

3-Card Bonus Bet

Some casinos offer a side bet based on the value of the three cards on the board, similar to the Pair plus bet in Three Card Poker. The main difference is in Let It Ride the bet has a separate win for a "Mini Royal", defined as a suited ace, king, and queen. The following table table shows the most common pay table for this bet.

The next pay table shows other possible variants of the Three Card Bonus bet.

3-Card Bonus
Hand	Table 1	Table 2	Table 3	Table 4	Table 5
Mini Royal	50	50	200	100	50
Straight flush	40	40	40	50	40
Three of a kind	30	30	30	30	30
Straight	6	5	6	6	6
Flush	3	4	3	3	4
Pair	1	1	1	1	1
Nothing	-1	-1	-1	-1	-1
House edge	7.10%	5.39%	4.38%	4.20%	2.14%

The only casino I am aware of that offers pay table 5 is the Borgata in Atlantic City (source ).

The Side Bet

Some, but not all, casinos allow a side bet of $1 for which you will receive an additional payoff with certain paying hands. This is a sucker bet that should be avoided.Based on a small sampling of casinos in Las Vegas and Laughlin the house edge varies from 13.77% (Lady Luck) to36.52% (New York, New York). Below are some casinos, their payoff table, and their house edge, in order from best to worst.

The following is a list of which casinos have which pay tables based on my small sampling. Unless otherwise stated all casinos are in Las Vegas:

• Table 1: Lady Luck
• Table 2: Las Vegas Club, Freemont, Californian,Plaza, Main Street Station, Ballys, Circus Circus,Hilton, Grand (Biloxi), Beau Rivage (Biloxi), Horseshoe(Tunica), Grand (Tunica)
• Table 3: Golden Gate
• Table 4: Bellagio, Excalibur, Mandalay Bay, Harrah's,Imperial Palace, Paris, Venetian
• Table 5: MGM Grand, Golden Nugget
• Table 6: Colorado Belle (Laughlin), Sky City (New Mexico)
• Table 7: Four Queens, Flamingo Hilton
• Table 8: New York New York
• Table 9: Rivers casino in Pittsburgh, PA

Seeing Extra Cards

Although players are not supposed to share information you can often accidentally see other player cards, or this rule is ignored and players voluntarily show each other their cards. Seeing other cards can make the difference in borderline plays, namely the zero house edge straights listed under the 4-card strategy above. In his book Mastering the Game of Let It Ride, author Stanley Ko offers a strategy for these situations. He doesn't state how much it lowers the house edge, but James Grosjean does in his book Beyond Counting (Exhibit CAA) . According to Grosjean, if you can see every player card in a 7-player game, and made perfect use of the information, it would lower the house advantage from 3.51% to 2.34% only.

Appendices

• Appendix 1: Details on how the strategy and expected return were determined.
• Appendix 2: Details on the Isle of Capri (Black Hawk, Colorado) rules.
• Appendix 3: Details on the Royal Swazi (Swaziland, Africa) rules.

Links

German translation of this page.