Caribbean stud poker is a casino table game with rules similar to five-card stud poker. It is played against the house and involves no bluffing or other deception. By participating players have the chance of winning a progressive jackpot. Precisely this jackpot concept has made Caribbean stud one of the most successful games amongst new casino games.
Caribbean Stud Poker Rules
Caribbean Stud Poker rules are fairly simple for every player with some poker knowledge. Hand rankings are the same as in any other poker variation, starting with the lowest ranking high card hand and going all the way up to the highest ranked royal flush hand. Before the start of the game all players place an ante bet and (optionally) a $1 progressive Jackpot wager. If players are dealt a royal flush they win the whole jackpot or a mere 10% for any straight flush.
Each player at the table is then dealt 5 cards face up, including the dealer, who has 4 cards face down and 1 card face up. After seeing the dealers face up card, players choose to either raise or fold. A raise is a bet twice the amount of the ante bet. By folding players lose their ante bet. After all bets have been made, the dealer reveals all of his cards. In order to play he must first “qualify”, meaning he needs a hand consisting of Ace and a King or better. If he doesn’t qualify, even money is paid on the ante bet and the raise bet is returned to the player. If the dealer qualifies, his hand is compared to the player’s hand. The better hand wins. If the player wins, his payout odds are determined according to a payout table based on his hand’s rank – a pair, two pair, three of a kind, etc.
History of Caribbean Stud Poker
As the name suggests, the game originates from the Caribbean Islands, namely in Aruba, some time in the 1980s. Some stories state it was being played on a cruise ship, sailing to Aruba. Other stories claim it was first played in one of the resort hotels in Aruba, then spreading to many of the resort hotels in the Caribbean. The game was introduced in brick and mortar casinos in the USA in the 1990s. Poker guru David Sklansky has laid claim on inventing the game in 1982 under the name Casino Poker. The rules were fairly similar but due to patent laws at the time, he couldn’t patent the game. According to him, he gave it a trial run at Vegas World, but it wasn’t quite successful. A few years later he was approached by a poker player who brought the game to Aruba and had it patented. The poker player and a casino owner altered the rules slightly to form modern Caribbean Stud Poker.
However, Sklansky’s story has yet to be verified, but what we know with certainty about how the game as it is played today came into being is that in 1987 a gambler by the name of James Suttle learned the rules from a broke poker player while playing Texas Hold’Em at Binion’s Horseshoe in Las Vegas. The player offered to teach him the game if Suttle would lend him $5,000. James accepted the deal as he would sell the game to his fellow casino owner and game developer Danny Jones for a larger sum. Danny Jones owned the King International Casino in Aruba (later to be Grand Holiday Casino). Danny introduced the game immediately to face moderate success until computer software engineer Michael Titus suggested this game needed a linked progressive jackpot, due to the large house advantage. Progressive jackpots had never been introduced before on table games, except for poker “bad beat” jackpots which were calculated on a daily or weekly basis. The first ever live table game progressive jackpot was what helped Caribbean Stud to gain popularity, even though the realization of this concept underwent numerous difficulties before being implemented.