a)Player makes an ante wager plus an optional $1 progressive side bet.

b)Each player and dealer will get 5 cards each with all the cards dealt face down, except one dealer card which is exposed. The player will examine his own cards and sharing of information is prohibited.

c)Player must either fold or raise.

d)When the player folds, he forfeits his cards, ante bet and side bet (if made)

e)When the player raises, he must raise his wage exactly equal to twice the ante.

f)The dealer will turn over his other 4 cards.

g)The dealer must sustain an ace and a king or higher to qualify. In another words, the lowest qualifying hand would be ace,king,4,3,2 and the highest non-qualifying hand would be ace,queen,jack,10,9. If the dealer does not qualify the player will win even money on his ante wager and the raise will push.

h) If the dealer qualifies and beats the player, both ante and raise will lose.

i)If the dealer qualifies and loses to the player, then the ante will pay even money and the raise according to the posted pay table. The U.S. pay table is shown below.

j)If the player and dealer tie, both ante and raise will push.

k)The progressive side bet will be entrirely based on the poker value of the player's hand. Various pay tables are available.

House edge

The lower right cell in the above table shows a house edge of 5.224%. However, I think this makes Caribbean Stud look like a worse bet than it really is. The house edge is traditionally defined as the expected loss to the original wager. In Caribbean Stud Poker the optimal strategy player will raise 52.23% of the time, for an average total wager of 2.045 units. For comparing one game against another I prefer to use the element of risk, which is the expected loss to the average wager, which in this case would be 5.224%/2.045 = 2.555%.