Mississippi Stud

Mississippi Stud is a five-card poker game played against a pay table rather than against the dealer. You get two cards, three community cards are turned over one at a time, and before each one you decide to fold or raise. It is a Scientific Games (now Light & Wonder) table game found in many US casinos, and it is often described as a faster, bolder version of Let It Ride: your bet can grow to ten times the ante, and every chip you put out is paid at the same odds. This guide covers how to play Mississippi Stud, the payouts, the full strategy and the house edge.

Mississippi Stud at a Glance

How to Play Mississippi Stud

1. Bet the ante. Place your ante in the ante circle.
2. The deal. You get two cards face down. The dealer places three community cards face down in the middle of the table. You can look at your own two cards.
3. 3rd Street. Fold and lose the ante, or raise by placing a 3rd Street bet of 1x, 2x or 3x the ante.
4. The first community card is turned. Now fold (losing everything bet so far) or make a 4th Street bet of 1x to 3x the ante.
5. The second community card is turned. Fold, or make the 5th Street bet of 1x to 3x the ante.
6. The last community card is turned. Your two cards plus the three community cards make your five-card hand, and every bet you have on the table is paid by the pay table.

The dealer never plays a hand, and the other players do not affect you: everyone at the table shares the same three community cards and is paid only on their own five cards.

Mississippi Stud Payouts

The standard pay table applies to the ante and to all three raises together:

Some casinos pay 5 to 1 on a straight instead of 4 to 1, which lowers the house edge to about 3.76%. Check the pay table on the layout or in the game’s help screen before you sit down.

Worked Examples

All four hands start with a 5 ante:

Mississippi Stud Strategy

The game has real decisions, and the right ones depend on a simple point count. Give each card points: J, Q, K and A are worth 2, 6 to 10 are worth 1, and 2 to 5 are worth 0. The strategy below is the optimal one published by Joseph Kisenwether on the Wizard of Odds.

With your two cards (3rd Street)

• Any pair: raise 3x.
• Two or more points: raise 1x.
• 6-5 suited: raise 1x.
• Everything else: fold.

With three cards (4th Street)

• Raise 3x with any paying or pushing pair (6s or higher) or better, a royal flush draw, and three-card straight flush draws: no gaps from 5-6-7 up; one gap with at least one high card; two gaps with at least two high cards.
• Raise 1x with any other three suited cards, a low pair (2s to 5s), three or more points, a no-gap straight draw from 4-5-6 up, or a one-gap straight draw with two cards from 6 to 10.
• Fold everything else.

With four cards (5th Street)

• Raise 3x with a pair of 6s or better (or any better hand), four to a flush, or four to an open-ended straight that is 8-high or better.
• Raise 1x with any other straight draw, a low pair, four or more points, or three cards from 6 to 10 when you raised 3x earlier in the hand.
• Fold everything else.

The logic is simple: since every bet is paid at the same odds, when you already have a hand that pays or pushes, you want as much money on the table as possible, so you raise the maximum. When you are only drawing, you raise the minimum to stay in. With this strategy you fold 31.1% of hands on 3rd Street, 7.7% on 4th Street and 4.9% on 5th Street.

Mississippi Stud Odds and House Edge

With perfect strategy and the standard pay table, the house edge is 4.91% of the ante. Because you raise on most hands, the average total bet is about 3.59 times the ante, so the expected loss is around 1.37% of all the money you put on the table. That is the figure to compare with other games: on the same basis, the Ante and Play in Three Card Poker costs about 2.01%. Those numbers come from working out the best play for every one of the 155,937,600 possible deals.

The swings are bigger than the house edge suggests. One hand can cost ten times the ante, and the big wins come from rare hands. Some casinos also offer an optional progressive side bet on your five-card hand; it is a separate bet with its own pay table.

Mississippi Stud vs Other Casino Poker Games

Mississippi Stud is closest to Let It Ride, where you place three bets and can pull two of them back. Here you add bets instead of removing them, which makes the hands more dramatic. Because it pays on your own hand alone, it also shares a lot with video poker.

Playing Mississippi Stud Online

Mississippi Stud is mostly a land-based game in the US; online it 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, Three Card Brag 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.

The other way round: in Let It Ride you start with three bets and take them back instead of adding raises.

A simpler suits game: High Card Flush, played against the dealer with seven cards each.

Mississippi Stud: frequently asked questions