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Russian Poker is one of the few types of Poker, where the player is not competing against other players, but instead is off against the dealer. Lack of opponents isn’t the only unique feature: most important is the possibility to swap and buy cards. Taking this into consideration, the basis of all strategies in Russian Poker is to carefully select cards for a swap (especially if you need to pay for it with a bet).
Strategy for Russian poker for new players
It is much easier to work out the probability for any actions as there are just two players in the game – you and the dealer. It’s not surprising that professional players have long since developed an all-embracing strategy, which is easy to follow, even for newbies.
The strategy is based on the decision-making around swapping / buying cards and looks like this:
- If a starting hand already has a strong five-card combination (street, flash, street / royal flash), then it’s recommended to buy a sixth card. If the extra card is worth an extra bet, make your own decision whether to buy or not to buy: any five card combination in Russian Poker turns out to be a winning one in 90% of the cases.
- If the starting hand has three cards of the same rank – set – then swap the other two cards that are not part of the set. The only case when you need to think about it, is when you have a set plus two elder kickers. Worst case scenario would be to lose those and get a pair of weak junior cards instead. Your best option is to get a quad.
- If you have a pair in the starting hand, it is best to swap three ’free’ cards, but if your pair is composed of elder cards, better buy another card instead. In case of a pair, take decisions based on the open card that the dealer has.
- If the starting had a draw hand and represents an unfinished combination, buy a sixth card or swap one-two cards, which are not part of this combination.
- If the starting hand is just all individual cards with one or two elder kickers, swap all junior cards: worst case is, you would have better cards, in the best case you would get at least a pair.
- If all five cards that you have are junior (and there is no combination whatsoever), swap four cards, keeping the highest. The only condition for swap is that your elder card is stronger than the open card for the dealer. If the dealer has an elder kicker, while you have a junior, drop your cards.
Strategy for swaps in Russian Poker
The decision to swap cards or keep them is the most important for the player in Russian Poker. It is necessary to take the cost of swap into account, for example, in many cases to swap a single card is worth an additional bet, equal to ante, for two cards – two antes, and so on. Hence, swapping a lot of cards in Russian Poker is in many ways not profitable, once you take into account the costs.
Swaps in Russian Poker
Swap a single card if you have a draw-hand, which needs a single card. In this case, you can also buy a sixth card if the card that is not a part of a combination is an elder kicker.
Swap two cards if you have a draw-combination that needs two cards for completion or set. Keep an eye on the cost of swaps in this case: if swapping two cards would cost an additional bet, which is twice the size of an ante, you can swap cards only if you have a very strong combination.
Swap three cards if you have a pair (regardless of the ranks). There is a single exception from this rule: if, in addition to a pair, you have an elder kicker, it’s best to swap two cards, instead of three – best to keep the elder card.
Swapping all five cards is a very rare case due to the high cost of the swap. If the online casino you are playing at allows swapping all five cards for the cost of one ante, you can try and swap all cards in the hand, but do it if the starting hand was all junior cards without any combinations.
