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The player should raise on any pair or better, fold on anything less than Ace/King. The only time a player needs to make a decision is when he is dealt an Ace/King hand. In this case he/she should:

1. Raise if the dealer's card is a 2 through queen and matches one of yours.
   
   
2. Raise if the dealer's card is an ace or king and you have a queen or jack in your hand.
   
   
3. Raise if the dealer's rank does not match any of yours and you have a queen in your hand and the dealer's card is less than your fourth highest card.

HOUSE EDGE
The game of caribbean stud poker has a built-in house advantage of 5.26%. So for every $100 a player wagers, in the long run they should lose $5.26.


PROGRESSIVE JACKPOT SIDE BET
In Caribbean Stud Poker the player has the choice to make a side bet of $1 which pays for hands of a flush or better. The specific payoff tables vary from place to place but always feature a progressive jackpot, paying 100% of the jackpot meter for a royal flush and 10% for a straight flush. In the very unlikely event that two players had a royal flush in the same hand the first one to the dealer's right would win the jackpot and the second would win whatever the jackpot is reseeded to, usually $10,000. The reason for this is the dealer pays players from right to left. In the event that two players received a straight flush at the same time the first one to the dealer's right would get 10% of the meter and the second would get 10% of what was left after the first player was paid. There is a story that once in the same hand one player got a royal flush and another player got a straight flush. The player with the royal was closer to the dealer's right and thus got the full jackpot amount. The meter was then reseeded to $10,000 and the player with the straight flush got only 10% or that, or $1000.

While the expected return varies depending on the size of the jackpot it is a sucker bet the vast majority of time. The average house edge is 26.46%.

A manager at Casino Niagara kindly explained how the jackpot meter works. For every dollar bet 71 cents goes into the jackpot and the casino keeps the other 29 cents. This rate of contribution can vary from place to place. All payoffs are paid right out of the meter. Every time somebody hits a royal flush the house contributes $10,000 (called the seed) to the next jackpot. The house edge is just under the cut per bet because the casino puts up the initial seed to start a new jackpot after somebody wins the previous one. At the Casino Niagara the house can expect to recieve 18.84 times as much money from the 29% cut as it pays to seed new jackpots.