The short version
Mississippi Stud pays from 1 to 1 up to 500 to 1, and it pays those odds on every chip you have out: the ante and all three street raises. That is why the raise decisions matter far more than the size of your ante, and why a single downgraded line on the felt can cost you more than a whole percentage point.
The standard pay table
| Hand | Pays |
|---|---|
| Royal flush | 500 to 1 |
| Straight flush | 100 to 1 |
| Four of a kind | 40 to 1 |
| Full house | 10 to 1 |
| Flush | 6 to 1 |
| Straight | 4 to 1 |
| Three of a kind | 3 to 1 |
| Two pair | 2 to 1 |
| Pair of jacks or better | 1 to 1 |
| Pair of 6s through 10s | Push |
| All other hands | Loss |
Your hand is the five cards on the table: both hole cards and all three community cards. There is nothing to select and nothing to discard. A pair of 6s through 10s returns your chips untouched, and anything below that (a pair of 5s, a pair of deuces, no pair at all) loses everything you have wagered.
Every bet you have out is paid at these odds
This is the point most new players miss, and it is the whole shape of the game. The pay table is not applied to your ante. It is applied to the total of the ante and every raise you made.
A worked hand
You ante $5. On 3rd Street you raise 1x, another $5. On 4th Street a third suited card arrives and you raise 3x, $15. On 5th Street you are four to a flush and raise 3x again, $15. You now have $40 on the table, which is 8 antes.
The last card completes the flush. A flush pays 6 to 1, so you are paid $240 in winnings and keep the $40, $280 back on a $5 ante. Had the flush missed and left you with king high, the same eight antes would have gone the other way.
How much you have at risk when the hand settles is therefore the number that decides what the hand is worth. Following the published chart, it comes out like this.
| On the table | How you got there | Share of hands |
|---|---|---|
| 1 antes | Folded on 3rd Street | 31.0709 |
| 2 antes | Raised 1x, folded on 4th Street | 7.6742 |
| 3 antes | Raised 1x, 1x, folded on 5th Street | 4.8466 |
| 4 antes | Raised 1x, 1x, 1x, played to the end | 35.2210 |
| 5 antes | Raised 1x, 3x, folded on 5th Street | 0.0081 |
| 6 antes | One 3x raise, played to the end | 10.2906 |
| 8 antes | Two 3x raises, played to the end | 6.7437 |
| 10 antes | Three 3x raises, played to the end | 4.1448 |
| 3.590 antes | Average across all hands | 100.0000 |
Shares are percentages of all 155,937,600 possible deals. The five-ante row is a genuine rarity: it needs a 1x raise, then a 3x raise, then a fold, which the chart asks for on eight thousandths of one percent of hands. There is no seven-ante row, because a hand that raises 3x on 3rd Street is never folded afterwards.
The push band, and why a pair of 5s hurts
The pair of 6s through 10s push is unusual and generous-feeling, and it lands on 10.18% of hands. It is also the reason the bottom of the table is so sharp. A pair of 5s is one rank below the push and loses everything on the felt. Raise 3x on all three streets and you have ten antes out, all ten of which can go to a pair of deuces.
This is not an argument against raising with low pairs: a low pair is still worth +2.18 antes because of the trips, two pair and full houses it turns into. It is an argument for knowing what your maximum exposure on a hand actually is before you make the third raise.
Where the money actually comes back from
Across every deal, the paying lines return +1.813 antes per hand. Losing showdowns take back 1.253 and folds take another 0.610, which leaves the 0.049 antes a hand that is the house edge. The interesting part is how lopsided the winnings are.
| Paying hand | Pays | Average antes out | Return per ante | Share of winnings |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pair of jacks or better | 1 to 1 | 6.335 | +0.675376 | 37.24% |
| Two pair | 2 to 1 | 7.315 | +0.486063 | 26.80% |
| Three of a kind | 3 to 1 | 7.851 | +0.368807 | 20.34% |
| Full house | 10 to 1 | 8.612 | +0.099483 | 5.49% |
| Four of a kind | 40 to 1 | 9.145 | +0.076227 | 4.20% |
| Flush | 6 to 1 | 6.229 | +0.049912 | 2.75% |
| Straight | 4 to 1 | 4.851 | +0.044995 | 2.48% |
| Straight flush | 100 to 1 | 7.081 | +0.006320 | 0.35% |
| Royal flush | 500 to 1 | 8.000 | +0.006156 | 0.34% |
| All paying hands | +1.813339 | 100.00% | ||
Average antes out is the mean total wager on hands that finish as that hand. Share of winnings is that line’s portion of the +1.813339 antes a hand the pay table returns in total.
Pairs of jacks or better, two pair and three of a kind between them are 84.4% of everything the pay table gives back. The royal flush (the number printed largest on every felt) is 0.34%. You are not playing for the top line. You are playing for the three lines nobody puts on the sign.
What one line off the table would cost
Pay tables vary between casinos, and a single downgraded line does more damage than it looks like it should, because the pay table multiplies an average of 3.59 antes, not one. The figures below are computed the same way as everything else on this site: the optimal strategy is re-derived for each altered table, then the whole 155,937,600-deal space is enumerated again. They are illustrations of what each line is worth, not a claim that any particular casino spreads them.
| Pay table | House edge, perfect play | Extra cost |
|---|---|---|
| The standard table above | 4.9149% | baseline |
| Three of a kind pays 2 instead of 3 | 17.1947% | +12.2799% |
| Full house pays 8 instead of 10 | 6.9045% | +1.9897% |
| Four of a kind pays 30 instead of 40 | 6.8205% | +1.9057% |
| Straight pays 3 instead of 4 | 5.9880% | +1.0731% |
| Flush pays 5 instead of 6 | 5.7417% | +0.8268% |
| Royal flush pays 250 instead of 500 | 5.2227% | +0.3078% |
Edges are of the ante, under perfect play, for each table in isolation.
Read down that column and the ranking is the opposite of intuition. Shaving the royal flush in half costs 0.31% and you would barely feel it. Taking one unit off three of a kind (a hand you make once in 36 showdowns, usually with nearly eight antes on the table) costs more than twelve percentage points and turns the game into something not worth sitting at. The middle of the pay table is where your money lives.
The 3-Card Bonus pay table
The optional side bet is settled on your two hole cards plus the first community card, and it pays whether or not you go on to fold the hand.
| Hand | Pays |
|---|---|
| Mini royal (A-K-Q suited) | 50 to 1 |
| Straight flush | 40 to 1 |
| Three of a kind | 30 to 1 |
| Straight | 6 to 1 |
| Flush | 4 to 1 |
| Pair | 1 to 1 |
| All other hands | Loss |
That table carries a house edge of 2.1357%, which sounds better than the base game until you notice it is charged on a bet that settles once rather than on an ante that grows to 3.59. Per dollar staked it is the more expensive wager of the two. There is a full breakdown in is the 3-Card Bonus worth it.
Check the felt before you sit down
Both pay tables are printed on the layout. Before your first ante, read the main table from the bottom up: confirm the push band is 6s through 10s and not 7s or higher, confirm three of a kind is 3 to 1, full house 10 to 1 and flush 6 to 1. Those four lines carry the game. If any of them is short, the table across the aisle is probably worth the walk.
Work out your maximum exposure before the hand rather than during it. At a $5 ante the worst case is $50 on a single deal, and at $25 it is $250. Neither is a reason not to raise when the cards say raise, but it is the number your session bankroll has to survive several times over, and knowing it in advance is what stops the third raise feeling like a decision you did not mean to make.
If you want to see the pay table doing its work, the free table settles every hand against exactly these odds and shows the running return.