The six casino poker games on the UK floor

Start with the layout, because until you know what's on the floor you can't make a sensible choice about where to sit.

The phrase "casino poker" covers a family of games that were invented, patented, and rolled out to casino floors between the mid-1980s and the 2000s. They look like poker because the hand rankings are the same: a straight flush beats a flush, a pair beats nothing. But they are not poker in the tournament or cash-game sense. There's no bluffing, no betting into other players, no reading tells across the table. You're playing against the house, and the house has a built-in mathematical edge on every hand. What varies considerably between the six games is how large that edge is, how much skill influences it, and how quickly your bankroll moves.

The six games you're most likely to encounter on a UK floor are Three Card Poker, Caribbean Stud, Ultimate Texas Hold'em, Casino Hold'em, Let It Ride, and Pai Gow Poker. A large venue like Aspers at Westfield Stratford, which runs one of the widest carnival pits in London, will often have several of these running simultaneously. A smaller central London room might carry only two or three. Knowing what each game actually is before you walk in means you're not making a decision under pressure at the table minimum sign.

The Games That Use a Single Dealt Hand

Three Card Poker is the simplest entry point. You and the dealer each receive three cards. You decide whether to fold or raise based on those three cards alone. The dealer needs queen-high or better to qualify. If you follow the optimal strategy of raising on any hand containing queen-six-four or better, the combined house edge on the Ante and Play bets runs to 3.37%, per our analysis. The game moves fast, roughly 40 to 50 hands per hour on a live table, which means that 3.37% edge generates real theoretical loss per hour at any meaningful bet size.

Caribbean Stud is slower and uses a five-card hand. You receive five cards face down; the dealer receives four face down and one face up. You decide whether to fold or raise to twice your ante based on your hand and the dealer's visible card. Our Caribbean Stud page puts the house edge at 5.22% under optimal strategy. That's a notably worse proposition than Three Card Poker. The qualifying condition is different too: the dealer needs ace-king or better to qualify, which changes the dynamics of when raising makes sense.

Let It Ride is the odd one out structurally. You place three equal bets at the start, then the dealer reveals community cards in stages and you're allowed to pull back two of your three bets if the developing hand doesn't justify keeping them in. You can never add money after the opening deal; you can only defend less of it. Our Let It Ride analysis puts the edge at 3.51% of the initial minimum bet, and the game is slower than Three Card Poker, meaning the hourly cost can actually be lower than the edge figure suggests if you're pulling bets back regularly.

The Community-Card Games

Ultimate Texas Hold'em and Casino Hold'em both use community cards shared between the player and the dealer, in the same way that Texas Hold'em does. That structural similarity is where the resemblance to real poker ends.

In Ultimate Texas Hold'em, you receive two hole cards and decide immediately whether to make a large pre-flop raise (four times the ante), a medium raise on the flop (twice the ante), or a small raise on the river (equal to the ante). The game has the lowest house edge of the six: 2.19% per ante bet under near-optimal play, per our in-house analysis. The critical decision is the pre-flop 4x raise. If you miss it when you should have made it, you're giving back edge. The game rewards players who understand starting hand strength in Texas Hold'em terms, which is why it sits closer to skill-adjacent than pure carnival fare.

Casino Hold'em is superficially similar but structurally different. You post an ante, receive two hole cards, see a three-card flop, and then decide whether to call or fold before the dealer turns the full five-card board. You don't choose the size of your raise. The house edge under the standard pay table runs to 2.16%, marginally lower than Ultimate Texas Hold'em, though the games are close enough that the difference is nearly academic at typical session volumes. Casino Hold'em's AA Bonus side bet is a separate creature with its own edge, which the side-bets lesson covers.

Pai Gow: The Slowest Game in the Pit

Pai Gow Poker is in a category by itself. You receive seven cards and must split them into a five-card high hand and a two-card low hand. Both hands must beat the dealer's corresponding hands for you to win the bet. If you win one and lose one, it's a push. The house wins all ties on either hand. The casino charges 5% commission on winning bets.

The house edge when you play the house way against a dealer banker is approximately 2.84%, in our Pai Gow analysis. But Pai Gow has something no other carnival game has: a banking option. At most tables, the right to bank rotates among players. When you bank, you're effectively becoming the house for that round. Banking against the dealer's house way reduces your expected loss dramatically, down to roughly 0.25% in optimal conditions. Most UK floors allow banking but implement it inconsistently, so it's worth confirming the procedure before you sit down.

Pai Gow is also the slowest game in the pit. Push rates of approximately 40% mean roughly four hands in ten resolve with no money changing hands. If your primary concern is managing how quickly your bankroll erodes, Pai Gow's combination of moderate edge and high push rate makes it among the gentlest options on a UK floor.

How the Six Games Compare

Here's the practical summary for someone walking into a London casino and choosing where to sit. Ultimate Texas Hold'em and Casino Hold'em carry the lowest base house edges, both around 2.16% to 2.19%. Pai Gow at 2.84% is close behind, and its push rate keeps the pace slow. Three Card Poker at 3.37% is the classic entry point, simple enough to learn in two minutes and widely available. Let It Ride at 3.51% is gentler on the clock than the edge suggests. Caribbean Stud at 5.22% is the worst baseline proposition of the six, and the progressive side bet attached to most Caribbean Stud tables is worse still.

None of these games are roulette: they all have a strategy layer that affects the edge you actually experience. Playing Caribbean Stud without understanding the raise rule doesn't cost you 5.22%; it can cost considerably more. Playing Ultimate Texas Hold'em with correct 4x pre-flop discipline is a meaningfully different proposition from playing it purely on feel. The casino poker trainers on this site let you practise each game's optimal decisions before you sit at a live table, which is where the strategic differences become real money.

Key numbers

Sources: our in-house edge analysis, our calculation, Hippodrome Casino table games.