How to Gamble with Cards (At Home or in the Casino)

Learning how to gamble with cards means learning lots of different gaming traditions and rules.

That is to say, playing cards are a big part of the gambling industry. Gamblers also use playing cards for gambling outside the casino, in informal private games in people’s homes. The collectible card industry is worth billions of dollars, and gamblers use those cards to gamble with as well. Wherever you find people gambling, you’re likely to find some form of playing cards.

Modern playing card games draw on old traditions. The symbols and images that appear on the cards have lost their original meanings. Now, those clubs, spades, diamonds, and hearts are a stand-in for gambling itself.

This post discusses the basics of gambling with playing cards as well as the specifics of 7 different popular ways people gamble with cards.

The History of Gambling with Cards

Historians track the first evidence of a deck of playing cards being used for gambling to 1377.

That year, a German monk recorded the makeup of the deck and the rules of a few different games. These games didn’t just pop up out of thin air. Traders from Southeast Asia likely passed those games to Europeans. Southeast Asia had been playing card games for millennia.

That German monk’s deck would be easy for modern players to use. It was made up of 52 cards and four suits, just like our modern deck. These early examples of playing cards were luxury items. They were objects of art, hand-painted and too delicate to stand up to regular use.

These cards made their way through the countries of Europe, with each culture adding a piece along the way. Americans started printing their own playing cards around the time of the US Civil War. The modern playing card deck was complete by the turn of the 20th century, thanks to the addition of the Joker.

The 7 Most Popular Ways to Gamble with Cards

Playing cards are an open-ended prop that people around the world have used to create a big variety of gambling games.

Below is a description of the 7 most popular ways people gamble for money with cards:

1 – Poker Games

Poker is a family of card games. You’ve probably heard of some version of poker. Some of the more popular versions are Texas hold’em, five-card draw, and seven-card stud. Taken together, they make up the most common way to gamble with cards in the world.

Poker is a comparison game. Players try to build the best-possible hand based on the hand they’re dealt and various moves they’re allowed to make during the game. Betting rounds occur. At the end, players reveal their hands. A hand hierarchy determines the winner.

Poker is an ideal fit for gambling because there are built-in breaks in the action. Between rounds of play, there are natural stops in the flow of the game where players bet money on the outcome or drop out of the game. See “how long do poker games last” for more about this.

You can play poker for money in a home game, a poker room, or in a casino. Casinos also run table game variations of poker which are covered in a later section.

2 – Blackjack Games

Blackjack is a different kind of comparison game played with cards. Blackjack is a common table game. You can expect a game of blackjack at any casino you visit.

The object of blackjack is to build a hand with a point value as close to 21 as possible without going over. In blackjack, face cards are worth 10 points. Every other card, except for the ace, is worth its face value. Aces can be worth 1 or 11 points, depending on player preference and game context.

Playing blackjack for money means betting that your hand will beat the dealer’s hand. This could happen for three reasons:

1. The dealer busts by building a hand worth more than 21 points
2. You draw a hand made up of an ace and a face card (called a natural blackjack)
3. The dealer’s hand is worth less than yours at the end of the game.

3 – Baccarat Games

Both playing card games described above (blackjack and poker) have a skill element. That means the way you play affects your likelihood of winning. In blackjack, following optimal strategy means the casino has just a 0.5% edge against you. That’s among the best odds in the casino. It also assumes that you’re playing in a single deck game. Poker players who hone their skills can likewise improve their chances of winning.

That’s not the case with baccarat. This is a game using playing cards that’s based entirely on luck. Bettors don’t touch or go anywhere near the cards. In baccarat, playing cards are just props. The bets are simple and most of the odds are favorable.

Here’s how baccarat works:

Baccarat players have three betting choices:

1. player
2. banker
3. tie

These refer to the two hands in the game; one is called the player hand and the other is called the banker hand. After bets are placed, four cards are dealt. One goes to the player hand, then one goes to the banker hand. This process repeats so that both hands have two cards.

If the point total is 8 or 9 for either hand, this is known as a natural, and the game is over. If neither hand totals 8 or 9, the dealer can draw an extra card on one or both hands based on the game’s rules.

The hand closer to 9 points wins. Winning bets on the banker hand owe a 5% commission to the house.

4 – Video Poker Games

Video poker uses virtual playing cards to replicate the game of poker on a machine game. It’s a skill game, meaning the way you play affects your chances of winning.

Video poker machines replace the poker dealer with software. Instead of a poker table, you get a digital display. The traditional poker hand hierarchy goes out the window and is replaced with a unique pay table. The machine deals a hand, the player selects which cards to keep and which to draw again, and the player’s final hand is paid out according to the game’s pay table.

Video poker comes in a lot of varieties just like traditional poker. The standard video poker game is called Jacks or Better. The name refers to the fact that the lowest-paying hand you can form is a face card pair. The best pay table for that game is 9/6 Jacks or Better, or “full pay” Jacks or Better.

Played according to optimal video poker strategy, some versions give the player a slight edge against the casino. Learning to read video poker pay tables and find the best game is a big part of learning how to play.

5 – Casino Poker

As mentioned earlier, casinos have adapted poker for play on the casino floor like a table game. These games come in lots of varieties. Common casino-style poker games include Three Card Poker, Let It Ride, and Caribbean Stud.

The casino doesn’t take part in head-to-head poker games. In those games, the house acts as a bank and provides a dealer and other services in exchange for a small piece of every pot. Table games pit the house directly against players borrowing the rules of head-to-head poker.

Caribbean Stud is a good example of casino-style poker.

In Caribbean Stud, the dealer shows one card from his five-card hand. Players who have placed an ante bet are given five cards as well. Players decide whether they should fold or place an extra bet. The extra bet is typically double the cost of the ante. If they place that extra bet, they’ll reveal their hand, and the dealer will reveal his. Winning hands are paid out based on a pay table.

Another example is 2 3 5 Stud Poker, which is a relatively new casino poker game.

Casino poker games are popular, though they typically involve little or no skill. They’re a lot more like baccarat in that sense, and less like video poker or head-to-head poker play.

6 – California Craps

Now we’re getting into the less common but still popular ways to gamble with playing cards.

California law prohibits the use of dice in casino gambling. You’d think that would mean you can’t play craps in California, but that’s not the case. Tribal groups that run casinos in California have created a craps game that uses playing cards to get around the ban on dice.

California craps games use playing cards in two different ways. In some games, the dice are completely absent, and players pull cards from a deck to determine their total. In other versions, players still shoot dice, but the value of those dice is determined by the random draw of playing cards placed on the craps table.

The deck used in these games is specific to the game. Usually, six cards numbered between 1 and 6 (just like dice) are placed randomly on the table. The roll of the dice determines which of those cards are flipped. That way, the dice don’t determine the outcome. Playing cards do.

It sounds weird, and it’s a little strange to play at first. But you get used to it, just like you get used to the rules of any casino game you play over time.

7 – California Roulette

California law also forbids the use of balls to determine gambling outcomes. That means no roulette, right? Wrong again. California casino operators have created a roulette game that depends on playing cards. Just adding some playing cards to the game makes it legal.

That’s quite a loophole.

Here’s how California roulette works:

The familiar spinning wheel is there, but the black, red, and green numbers are replaced with playing cards. The wheel still has 38 slots, just like a typical American roulette wheel, but they alternate between red- and black-suited cards. Each card is modified to display a number: 0, 00, and 1-36.

Since each spot on the wheel is now labeled with a number and a color, you’ve got a typical game of American-style roulette. Except that it’s legal according to the State of California.

Conclusion – How to Gamble with Cards

This post describes the most common forms of gambling with cards.

When you learn how to gamble with cards, you’re making yourself part of this tradition. Some people who gamble with cards keep it simple and play hearts with their friends for a quarter a game. Others prefer to play high-stakes head-to-head poker with big money on the line. We’ve also got a growing community of people who gamble on collectible card games and other forms of card play.

Gambling with cards is as old as gambling itself. The ancient cards used for gambling may not be recognizable to us today, but they were just as vital to people then as today’s playing cards are to us.