Let It Ride is a variation of casino poker that first came on the scene in 1995. It was created by gaming equipment manufacturer Bally Technologies as a way to drum up more business for its Shuffle Master division, which makes shuffling machines used in casinos. Let It Ride was also fashioned to offer casino patrons a more relaxed gaming experience than other casino card games such as blackjack and other forms of poker, thereby looking to appeal to a more casual clientele.
What Are The Best Let It Ride Real Money Sites?
More casual casino gamblers don’t tend to be as sharp as far as paying attention to looking to play with a lower house edge, as blackjack players sometimes are for instance. The house edge of Let It Ride, under optimal play, is a fair bit higher than blackjack, at 3.51% versus blackjack’s less than 1% and if optimal strategies aren’t used, the house edge for Let It Ride goes up even more of course.
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Casino gambling really isn’t about looking for edges though, and there aren’t any anyway, other than card counting in blackjack. The absence of player advantage or the house edge are not a big factor in the decision of players to play that Casino game. Let It Ride Poker is an attractive game for many, not because of the house edge, but because the player is in control of the action.
Just like with Blackjack, the player has to take decisions when playing Let It Ride Poker. The decision is not to take more or less cards like at Blackjack but rather whether or not to Let It Ride: leaving the wagered money on the table or getting some of it back. This gives players some control over their losses, based on how the Let It Ride hand progresses and that psychologically. The rules of Let It ride poker are explained in more details below for novice casino players.
How To Play Let It Ride
Let It Ride has 3 spots on the table for each player to place bets on prior to a hand, which are labeled 1, 2, and 3. Players must place an equal amount on each spot. Each player Is dealt three cards face down, which they are not allowed to disclose to other players.
Two community cards are also dealt face down, which players will use along with their own three cards to put together 5 card poker hands. Players need at least a pair of 10’s to win, and beyond that, the better the hand the bigger the payout.
Prior to the first community card being revealed, players have the option of taking back one of their three bets, should they feel that their hand or the potential of their hand is not strong enough to justify the larger bets that are sitting on the table.
Players also have the option of having the bet in the second slot returned to them if they choose, after the first community card is turned up. When players do not choose to have a bet returned, they are said to be “letting it ride,” which is where the game gets its name.
Playing Let It Ride Correctly
The format of this game is identical to players increasing the size of their bets based upon having better hands, doubling down and tripling down the original bet as the hand progresses, but by having them retract the bets, the thinking behind this is that players will have a tendency to retract less often than they would bet. As well, the fact that the game of Let It Ride allows the player to get some money back from his bet if he seems to be losing is an important factor in this casino game’s success. As well, the fact that the game of Let It Ride allows the player to get some money back from his bet if he seems to be losing is an important factor in this casino game’s success.
The majority of the time, it is correct for players not to let anything ride, in other words to have both bets returned to them. It takes a good hand indeed to justify doubling or tripling the bet, like for instance you wouldn’t double down with a count of 7 in blackjack, but you may with 10 or 11. Let It Ride Poker works in the opposite direction, you take back bets rather than placing them, but the logic is the same. Only Let It Ride if you are in a strong position.
The correct strategy with Let it Ride is to only let it ride with 3 cards if you have a pair of 10’s or better, any 3 suited cards in a row except A23 and 234, any 3 to a royal flush, three to a straight flush with your three cards spreading over 4 cards, with at least 1 being a 10 or higher, or three to a straight flush spreading over 5 cards with 2 of them being a 10 or higher.
With 4 cards, you need a pair of 10’s or higher, 4 cards of the same suit, a four card open straight, or a 4 card inside straight with all 4 being 10 or higher.
As you might expect, players play looser than this and often quite a bit looser, but this just makes the casino’s edge bigger than it needs to be. The same is the case with side bets, which just increase the casino’s edge as well, and therefore aren’t a good idea.
The correct strategy is not extremely difficult to memorize and you can always come back to this page for a refresher before you start playing real money Let It Ride.
The house odds for this game aren’t really that bad if you play correctly, and are significantly better than some games, like American Roulette. You do want to make sure that you play at least fairly correctly though to keep these odds in line, close to the optimal anyway, and therefore get more bang for your buck at the Let It Ride tables.
Let It Ride Normal Payouts
Of course, luck is the main factor of success in Let It Ride but granted that you play with the correct strategy, you maximize your chance to play for a while and the longer you play, of course, the better your odds of hitting a big prize.
In a normal casino, the payouts for the game go up to 1000 times your stake so Let It Ride can pay off quite well if you are very lucky.
Below you find the standard payouts for Let It Ride. An honest casino will pay these prizes at Let It Ride:
- Royal Flush: 1000 times the stake
- Straight Flush: 200 times the stake
- Four of a kind: 50 times the stake
- Full House: 11 times the stake
- Flush: 8 times the stake
- Straight: 5 times the stake
- Three of a kind: 3 times the stake
- Two pair: 2 times the stake
- Tens or better: 1 times the stake
- Any other Let It Ride Hand: loss
In addition to the normal payouts, most casinos also offer a progressive jackpot on Let It Ride games, that pays out the following:
- Royal Flush: 100% of Jackpot
- Straight Flush: 10% of Jackpot
- 4 Of A Kind: $500
- Full House: $50
To play with the progressive feature enabled, players usually need to put up an additional $1 per hand.
Playing Let It Ride for Real Money
Large physical casinos will usually offer the game as they have a lot of space on the floor and probably attract a lot of players to their grounds. Finding Let It Ride in smaller casinos might be a bit more difficult and it is probable that your local casino would not offer the game as it might make more sense for them to add another Blackjack table or more slot machines instead.
Luckily for amateurs of the game, it is quite easy to play real money Let It Ride online.
At online casinos, there is no problem with floor space so they tend to offer as many games as they can, knowing that casino players like variety.
You would be hard pressed to find an online casino which does not offer real money Let It Ride and in any case all the casinos we have reviewed and recommend on this website offer the game.
In addition to availability, the main advantage of going online to play Let It ride for real money is that it allows you to keep an eye on the optimal strategy while you play. A physical Casino would maybe frown upon you coming in with your phone to check the strategy while you play but of course an online casino has no way to prevent you from keeping the Let It Ride optimal strategy information open while you play!
Online Bonuses for Let It Ride Games
Obviously, another major advantage of online casinos when it comes to real money Let It Ride is that most will offer a bonus to go along with your deposit.
You can usually get started in an online casino with at least a 100% match bonus od the real money you deposit. This lets you play twice as much as without the bonus and with more chips to play with, you can play longer and maybe get lucky with one of the massive Let It Ride payouts.
Of course the online casinos are not stupid, they don’t give you free money without some strings attached.
First of all you have to know that the casino bonus will be tied to a wagering requirement. This means that you will not be able to ask for a withdrawal of your casino winnings before you have played a big enough volume of money. This is a way for the casino to make sure that you play long enough for them to have an advantage over the player despite the bonus money.
Second of all, most online casinos will have different rules for table games like Let It Ride than for slots. A Slot machines player might have to wager less than a Let It Ride player before he can withdraw. This all has to do with the house edge of the games. Slot machines have higher house edge than table games and therefore the rules are different.
This might make it sound like playing Let It Ride with a bonus is not as good as playing the game only with real money. At the end of the day it is a question of preference but we would tend to say that using a bonus to play Let It Ride is quite useful.
The reason is that if you use a bonus, you will be able to play more Let It Ride poker than with just your real money. You might be able to play twice as many hands of Let It Ride and that gives you twice as many chances to hit a big prize. If you do hit a Royal Flush playing Let It Ride, you get 1000 times your stake and needless to say, that’s quite enough to meet the wagering requirement and cash out a nice sum.
Note however that before you decide to use a casino bonus rather than play Let It Ride with real money only, you should make sure to read the rules of the online casino to check that there is no negative fine print like special rules relating to Let It Ride play with a bonus.
The online casinos we recommend on this page all have very fair payouts and rules and are therefore solid choices to play real money Let It Ride, with or without a casino bonus.
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