Pair Plus

Pair Plus is the side bet on three-card tables that pays purely on the rank of the hand you are dealt, with no reference to the dealer at all. Make a pair or better and it pays; make less than a pair and it loses, even in a round where your main bet wins. That independence is the whole appeal, and also the cost. A pair or better arrives in about 25.6 percent of three-card deals, so the bet loses roughly three rounds in four, and the paytable has to carry very large multiples on the rare hands to make up for it. A common schedule pays 1 to 1 on a pair, 4 to 1 on a flush, 6 to 1 on a straight, 30 to 1 on three of a kind and 40 to 1 on a straight flush. Worked example: on that schedule a 10 stake returns 40 on a flush and 400 on three of a kind, but returns nothing on a queen-high hand that your ante bet may still win with. The number to check before betting is the top of the paytable, because operators trim it. Dropping a straight flush from 40 to 1 down to 35 to 1 moves the house edge on Pair Plus by roughly a point, and the printed table on the rules screen is the only place that difference is visible.