How to Get the Details Right in Difficult Caribbean Stud Hands

Caribbean Stud is one of those games where you can either have very easy hands to play or very difficult hands to play without much in between. This leads to a situation where it’s almost impossible for someone to learn the 100 percent perfect strategy for this game. However, it’s possible to get very, very close and effectively play perfectly in almost every single possible scenario by following a set of rules that will guide you in the right way. If you want to make it work out, then you’ll have to pay attention to the details.

Anyone who’s a fan of this game can tell you that you always raise with a pair or better and always fold with less than AK-high. However, when you have exactly AK-high, that’s when things get difficult really quickly because you have to start paying attention to a lot of details of the hand that you would otherwise ignore. The main information you need to know includes the dealer’s card and its relationship to the three cards in your hand that aren’t an ace or a king. We’ll call these three cards your singletons for the sake of this discussion.

If the dealer’s card matches one of your singletons, then you have an automatic raise every single time no matter the value of the card (note a singleton can never be an ace or a king). This drops the chances of the dealer having a pair enough that it pushes the hand into your favor by a very slim margin, and this is why you can raise. Don’t expect to make a ton of money from these hands, but raising is still better than folding. Along similar lines, if the dealer is showing an ace or king, then you can only raise if you have a singleton that’s a queen or jack. It’s that simple.

If the dealer’s card isn’t an ace or king, but it also doesn’t match one of your singletons, then will almost always fold. However, there is one very specific exception. If one of your singletons is a queen, and if the dealer’s card isn’t higher than more than one of your singletons, then you can go ahead and raise. This doesn’t happen much, but paying attention to the details will allow you to point out these scenarios and make money from them.