OBJECTIVE OF MISSISSIPPI STUD: Build the best five-card poker hand you can and get paid against a fixed pay table, with no dealer hand or other players to beat.
NUMBER OF PLAYERS: Any number, each player plays independently against the pay table
MATERIALS: A single standard 52-card deck
TYPE OF GAME: Casino table game (poker-based, house-banked)
AUDIENCE: Legal gambling age (21+ in most of the US, varies by jurisdiction)
OVERVIEW OF MISSISSIPPI STUD
So what is Mississippi Stud, exactly? Scientific Games built it to sit alongside Three Card Poker, Caribbean Stud, and Let It Ride, but it breaks from all three in one important way. There’s no dealer hand to compare against, and nobody else at the table affects your outcome either. You’re simply betting on the strength of your own five cards against a printed pay table, closer in spirit to Video Poker than to a game like Ultimate Texas Hold’em.
That single change reshapes the whole game. Every betting decision comes down to reading your own cards and deciding how much conviction you have in the hand you’re building, one card at a time.
SETUP
Place your Ante to enter a hand. The dealer gives you two hole cards face down, then lays three community cards face down in the middle of the layout. Nobody’s cards get revealed yet, not even the community cards.
HOW TO PLAY MISSISSIPPI STUD
Betting unfolds across three separate streets, each one revealing a little more information before your next decision.
3RD STREET
Look at your two hole cards. Decide whether to fold, forfeiting your Ante, or make a 3rd Street bet worth 1x to 3x that Ante. Once you’ve acted, the dealer flips over the first community card.
4TH STREET
With one community card now visible, you get another choice: fold and give up everything wagered so far, or add a 4th Street bet worth another 1x to 3x your Ante. The dealer then reveals the second community card.
5TH STREET
Two community cards are showing now, and this is your last chance to bet before the final card. Fold, or place a 5th Street bet worth 1x to 3x your Ante one more time.
THE SHOWDOWN
The dealer flips the third and final community card, giving everyone their complete five-card hand. Every wager still in play, the Ante plus any street bets you made, pays out at the exact same odds based on your final hand. Bet the maximum at every street and a single Royal Flush pays 500 to 1 on all ten units at once.
PAY TABLE
| Hand | Payout |
|---|---|
| Royal Flush | 500 to 1 |
| Straight Flush | 100 to 1 |
| Four of a Kind | 40 to 1 |
| Full House | 10 to 1 |
| Flush | 6 to 1 |
| Straight | 4 to 1 |
| Three of a Kind | 3 to 1 |
| Two Pair | 2 to 1 |
| Pair of Jacks or Better | 1 to 1 |
| Pair of 6s through 10s | Push |
| Pair of 5s or lower | Lose |
That pair of 6s cutoff matters more than it looks like on paper. Land anything from a pair of 6s up through 10s and you simply get your money back, no win, no loss. Fall below that and every wager still in action is gone.
THE 3-CARD BONUS
Most tables offer this side bet, settled purely on the three community cards, completely separate from your Ante and street bets. It pays out even if you fold your main hand, since the bonus never depends on your hole cards at all. Payout odds shift a bit by casino, but a typical table pays 40 to 1 for a straight flush down to even money for a plain pair.
MISSISSIPPI STUD STRATEGY
Correct strategy revolves entirely around when to raise big and when to bail. On 3rd Street, raise 3x with any pocket pair, and raise 1x with two suited cards Jack or higher, two suited connectors like 6-7 or 7-8, or any two unpaired cards both Jack or above. Fold everything weaker than that.
On 4th Street, raise 3x once you’ve already got a paying hand, meaning a pair of Jacks or better. A pair of 6s through 10s, four cards to a flush, or an open-ended straight draw are all worth a smaller 1x raise instead. On 5th Street, the math gets simpler: raise if your hand pays anything at all, and fold if it doesn’t. Knowing how to win at Mississippi Stud really just comes down to following these thresholds consistently instead of betting on gut feeling.
HOUSE EDGE
Played with optimal strategy, Mississippi Stud carries a house edge of 4.91% measured against your Ante. That figure alone makes it look rough, roughly in line with double-zero roulette, but it’s a bit misleading on its own. Because you typically end up betting several times your Ante across all three streets, averaging out to around 3.59 units per hand with correct play, the edge measured against your total action drops to closer to 1.37%, a much better number and one that puts it in the same range as respected games like baccarat.
FAQ
No. Your hand is only ever measured against the printed pay table. The dealer just deals the cards and settles the bets, without a hand of their own in the mix.
You forfeit your Ante along with any street bets you’ve already placed. A 3-Card Bonus wager, if you made one, still pays out normally since it never depended on your hole cards.
Less easily than you might expect. It’s far more common as a live table game than as a digital one, and only a handful of online casinos carry it compared to how widely Video Poker or Blackjack are available online.
A pair of Jacks or better pays even money. A pair of 6s through 10s doesn’t win, but it doesn’t lose either, you simply get your bets back. Anything weaker loses everything still in play.
Up to 10 times your Ante if you raise the full 3x at every street, one Ante plus three separate 3x bets.
They share the same poker-based, house-banked structure and multi-street betting, but the payout logic is completely different. Ultimate Texas Hold’em pays based on beating the dealer’s qualifying hand, while Mississippi Stud pays purely off your own hand against a fixed table, dealer hand or no dealer hand at all.
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