Let It Ride

Let It Ride is a five-card poker game with a twist: you start with three equal bets and, as the cards are revealed, you can take two of them back. There is no dealer hand to beat. Your three cards and two community cards make a poker hand, and anything from a pair of 10s up is paid from a fixed pay table, up to 1,000 to 1 for a royal flush. The game was invented by Shuffle Master founder John Breeding in the 1990s and is now part of the Light & Wonder table-game range. This guide explains how to play Let It Ride poker, the payouts, when to pull a bet back and the house edge.

Let It Ride at a Glance

How to Play Let It Ride

1. Place three equal bets. On most layouts the circles are marked 1, 2 and $.
2. The deal. You get three cards face down, and the dealer places two community cards face down in the middle.
3. First decision. Look at your three cards. Ask for bet 1 back, or let it ride.
4. The first community card is turned over.
5. Second decision. Ask for bet 2 back, or let it ride. You can do this whatever you did with bet 1.
6. The second community card is turned over. Your five-card hand is paid on every bet still on the table. The $ bet always stays.

At a casino table you signal the dealer to return a bet; online it is a button. Players are not supposed to show each other their cards.

Let It Ride Payouts

The standard pay table, paid on each bet you still have on the table:

Pay tables vary slightly between casinos, and many tables cap the total they will pay out on one round. If the cap divided by 3,000 is less than your bet on each circle, a royal flush would not be paid in full, so check the table limit before playing for big stakes.

Worked Examples

All four hands start with 5 on each of the three circles (15 in total):

Let It Ride Strategy

The decisions are simple once you know them. A high card here means 10, J, Q, K or A (an ace counts as high only when it plays high). The rules below are the optimal strategy for the standard pay table, as published by the Wizard of Odds.

With three cards: let bet 1 ride only with

• A paying hand already: a pair of 10s or better, or three of a kind.
• Any three cards to a royal flush.
• Three suited cards in a row, except 2-3-4 and A-2-3.
• Three to a straight flush with one gap (such as 8-9-J suited) and at least one high card.
• Three to a straight flush with two gaps (such as 9-J-K suited) and at least two high cards.

Everything else: pull bet 1 back. That includes small pairs and hands with only high cards.

With four cards: let bet 2 ride only with

• A paying hand: a pair of 10s or better, two pair or three of a kind.
• Four cards of the same suit.
• Four to an open-ended straight (such as 5-6-7-8), with or without high cards.
• Four to an inside straight made of four high cards (such as 10-J-Q-A).

Everything else: pull bet 2 back.

The two borderline plays, an open-ended straight draw with no high cards and an inside straight draw with four high cards, are break-even: letting it ride or pulling back costs the same on average.

Let It Ride Odds and House Edge

With the standard pay table and the strategy above, the house edge is 3.51% of one bet. Because you pull back most bets, an average of only 1.23 bets stays on the table by the end of the hand, so the expected loss is about 2.85% of the money actually wagered. Those figures come from playing every one of the 51,979,200 possible deals with the best decision at each step.

Many tables offer side bets on top, such as a Three Card Bonus on your own three cards, ranked like Three Card Brag, much like the Pairplus bet in Three Card Poker. Side bets are optional and separate from the main game.

Let It Ride vs Other Casino Poker Games

Let It Ride is the gentlest of these: your risk only goes down as the hand goes on, and the most you can lose is the three bets you started with. Mississippi Stud works the other way round, adding bets as the cards appear.

Playing Let It Ride Online

Online, Let It Ride appears as an RNG table game at some casinos, and availability varies by casino and by country. Search the table-games section of the lobby, where you will also find casino poker games such as Three Card Poker and Casino Hold’em. These casinos run large table-game lobbies:

More casino poker: poker hand rankings, video poker and poker rules.

Set a budget before you play for real money and stick to it. Free, confidential support is available at BeGambleAware.org. 18+ only.

Also worth a look: Caribbean Stud Poker, the classic five-card game played against the dealer.

Let It Ride: frequently asked questions