Casino Poker Strategy: Overview

Because in casino-style Poker games the player is pitched one-on-one against the casino's dealer, rather than in a tournament with other players around the table competing to win a common pot, the traditional skills of bluffing, or manipulating your opponent's expectations, are not required for strategic play of these games. The casino's dealer in these Poker games has no free will in how they play their hand - the way they construct the hand and proceed with decisions affecting it are prescribed by house rules. This gives the player simpler strategies to put into play, since they can know what their opponent will do in a given situation – the person you're aiming to beat isn't in the business of bluffing about their hand!

You will already be aware that all the UK online casinos we list offer quite a variety of Poker games and within those game styles you may find different rule authorities in operation that can affect strategy by stipulating, for example, different minimum qualifying hands for the dealers of that casino's games. For that reason, and a point we make no apology for returning to several times in our specific game advice, always take time to check the game rules in effect at the UK online casino you've chosen to play to be sure that a strategy you plan to play with is still relevant to those rules.

Applicable to all the casino Pokers mentioned in this section, the aim of the player strategies is to achieve as close to ‘perfect play' as is possible. Doing so means the player will achieve the optimum odds possible, keeping the house edge to its lowest possible value. As you will see some bets on certain casino Poker formats attract a relatively high house edge, so there is even greater incentive to play with a good basic strategy to prevent conceding any further advantage to the casino you're playing. You may well find that the best UK online casinos also operate separate online poker sites where players can compete against each other in tournament-style games. We do not intend to cover strategy for those types of game here – this section is exclusively focused on the casino Poker games played against the dealer.

Lots of online casinos do operate separate online poker rooms, where players can compete against each other for common pots, but the focus of this section is to deal exclusively with the casino-style games played against the dealer.

Please use the tabs above to select the online casino Poker style you're interested in for more details about basic strategy for that game.