Casino Hold'em
Casino Hold’em is a house-banked poker game in which the player bets against the dealer rather than other players, combining two hole cards with five shared community cards to make the best five-card hand. The round opens with an Ante; after the three-card flop the player either folds and loses it, or calls with a bet of twice the Ante. There is no pot to win and no bluffing, so the result rests on the cards and on whether the dealer’s hand qualifies.
How a Casino Hold'em hand is settled
The dealer qualifies with a pair of fours or better, which happens in roughly 75.8% of deals when every possible seven-card combination is counted. If the dealer falls short, the Ante is paid from the Ante paytable and the Call bet is simply returned. If the dealer qualifies, the higher hand takes both bets, the Call pays even money and a tie pushes everything.
The common Ante paytable pays 100 to 1 for a royal flush, 20 to 1 for a straight flush, 10 to 1 for four of a kind, 3 to 1 for a full house and 2 to 1 for a flush, with any lower winning hand at evens.
A €10 Ante and €20 Call ending in a full house that beats a qualifying dealer returns €30 on the Ante and €20 on the Call, a profit of €50.
House edge and common confusions
Under that standard paytable and optimal play, the house edge works out at about 2.16% in the Wizard of Odds return tables. Other paytables shift it, to roughly 1.96% or 2.40% on two published variants, so the figure belongs to the paytable on screen rather than to the game’s name.
That number also assumes correct folding decisions, and careless calling costs more.
Readers often mix Casino Hold’em up with Texas Hold’em poker, where players compete with each other for a pot and the room takes a rake instead of banking the bets. Ultimate Texas Hold’em is a separate house-banked game again, with its own betting rounds and its own paytables.
