3 Best Let It Ride Tips Guaranteed to Help Make You a Better Gambler

There are a ton of variations of poker, but one of the best is Let It Ride.

Poker has been a staple in casinos across the world, alongside other popular games like blackjack. What makes Let It Ride one of the best games is that it takes aspects from these two great casino games and combines them into one.

There’s a good chance you already know how to play Let It Ride, but want to get better at it. If that’s true, you’ve come to the right place.

My Let It Ride strategy guide will help you improve your skills and win more money. Find out why you should play your cards right, take things slow, and avoid side bets below!

My first Let It Ride strategy is to play your cards right, which you can basically say about any game. However, not playing the optimal way in this game can burn your pockets in a flash.

As I mentioned earlier, Let It Ride is a fusion of blackjack and poker, two of the more strategically challenging games on the casino floor.

Fittingly, this game also involves a fair share of strategic thinking based on the two player decision points that occur during each hand.

Simply put, unless you know exactly when to let those bets ride and when to take them back, you’ll find yourself spewing money away rapidly.

By sticking to my Let It Ride poker tips, you’ll be able to avoid this issue that many gamblers fall victim to.

The goal of the game is to assess your first three cards, judging them based on “made” poker hands like pairs or three of a kind, or on “draws” like three of one suit (to make a flush) or three connected ranks, to make a straight.

For experienced poker players with a keen card sense, taking any three cards from the deck and deciding instantly whether or not they’re valuable enough to warrant three bets or weak enough to warrant pulling one bet back is a piece of cake.

But for beginners, three cards alone aren’t enough to make accurate appraisals of hand strength, which is why I see newbies letting it ride with inferior hands like 9 10 J unsuited.

For them, three cards to a straight seem like a nice hand to bet big on, especially knowing they can just make one pair to secure a minimum payout.

As you’ll learn by studying this simple Let It Ride strategy guide, however, the old 9 10 J just isn’t good enough to keep all three bets intact.

Take a look at the list below to see the only hands you should be letting it ride with at the first decision point (holding three cards):

This list is short and sweet for a reason: leaving that extra bet at risk without a good enough three card starting hand is bankroll suicide. It’s hard enough to complete quality five card poker hands in formats like Texas Hold’em when you have five community cards to work with, or video poker, which allows players to swap out bad cards for replacements.

In Let It Ride, you only have two shots in the dark, the pair of community cards, to complete a paying hand. So, starting with anything less than three to a straight flush, or a hand already payable, is just too steep of a hill to climb.

Once you’ve received the first community card to work with, increasing your current hand to four cards altogether, the following hand strength thresholds should be applied for the second let it ride decision:

In this case, the list of qualifying hands still seems to be quite short, but in reality, you’ll find many combinations that create a four card straight draw or four card flush draw.

Along with several payable hands that you can land by now, from one pair to two pairs and three of a kind, this stage of the hand should allow you to be a little more liberal when deciding to let that last bet ride.

Applying these relatively straightforward poker hand guidelines to your decision-making will ensure that the lowest house edge of 3.51 percent is offered during a Let It Ride session.

Fair warning, though, as deviating from optimal strategy and playing by gut instinct or feel will cause that house edge – already a tad high for hybrid table games – to climb even higher as a result.

Again, sticking to my Let It Ride strategy and betting tips is the best way to ensure that doesn’t happen.

And the best way to apply these strategy tips is playing at a reputable gambling site, such as Ignition Casino.

It’s important that you know where to play Let It Ride. You only ever want to play at a legit online casino, and one of the best sites to play at is Ignition Casino.

Ignition offers over 300 games, which includes a vast collection of slots, table games, video poker, live dealer games, and much more.

The main reason you’ll want to choose this site is because of it’s exclusive bonus of 300% up to $3,000.

You can find out more about their site with this in-depth Ignition Casino review, or you can head straight there to play Let It Ride (or as they like to say, “Let ‘Em Ride”) right now!

It can be easy to get carried away in a fast-paced game, but that’s exactly what the casino wants you to do.

My tips for Let It Ride poker will continue by slowing down the overall pace of the game to help you win.

One aspect of casino game strategy that many players, beginner and veteran alike, tend to overlook concerns a concept known as “pace of play.”

Every game uses different rules and mechanics, down to how cards are dealt, how many decisions players face, and how winning wagers are settled.

The sum of these variables is that some games move quite briskly, with players taking several dozen hands (or plays) per hour, while others offer a more leisurely experience.

Knowing how your favorite games stack up regarding the pace of play is important because the house edge you’re attempting to overcome is applied on every single hand.

Therefore, seeing more hands in a given hour when you have a very low house edge working against you should be the goal – as most advantage play blackjack and video poker players know quite well.

But when you find yourself sitting in a game like Let It Ride, which offers a much higher house edge than those games – and most hybrid table games, the objective is reversed. Rather than trying to play more hands per hour, savvy players should try to take fewer hands over a session.

The table below illustrates just how different common casino games can be when it comes to the pace of play, showing how many hands (or spins, rolls, etc.) per hour players can expect to see:

As you can see, Let It Ride ranks right near the middle when compared to more than a dozen casino game competitors. You won’t be stuck in the mud like real money Pai Gow Poker players and their 34 hands per hour, approximately one every two minutes, but you won’t be blazing like Spanish 21 players who see more than one hand per minute.

At 52 hands per hour on average, Let It Ride games offer players just under one hand per minute, which is a decent pace of play. The problem is, though, Let It Ride doesn’t carry a particularly player-friendly house edge.

At 3.51 percent – six times that of blackjack when played with optimal strategy – players are already facing an uphill climb as it is. By seeing more hands per hour, you’ll simply be taking a negative expectation wager more frequently.

For this reason, I advise new Let It Ride fans to become saboteurs of sorts. When I’m playing, I do everything I can to decrease that pace of play, hopefully down to 40 hands or so per hour.

Cutting a dozen hands out of the equation over an hour may not seem like all that much, but when each of those hands incurs a 3.51 percent house edge, removing them from my ledger entirely is a great way to save a few bucks.

And for higher house edge games like Let It Ride, that’s simply a mathematical fact. I will lose more than I win on this game – if I play it long enough. That’s why I advise short and sweet sessions, usually of just an hour or more, before moving on to more player-friendly games like blackjack.

Along with shortening the session, I also try to stretch it out to see fewer hands over the interim. This Let It Ride poker strategy isn’t cheating or anything of the sort, so don’t be afraid to use it yourself.

Just take your time with every action, from sliding the chips forward, checking your three starting cards, and informing the dealer about letting bets ride.

Doing so will immediately grind the game’s gears and slow things down, thereby decreasing your hands-per-hour rate – and your expected hourly loss as a result.

The dealer might shoot a few frowns your way while you play slow, but if you keep feeding them extra tips throughout the session, they’ll eventually understand your Let It Ride betting strategy.

After all, if the dealer is upset at you, that means you’re probably doing something right. I would even recommend playing on a gambling app, so it’s less awkward.

My Let It Ride poker tips will conclude by saying that side bets are for suckers and suckers only. That’s not a blanket statement on all table game side bets, as many are reasonably constructed and add entertainment value to the equation.

Good thing you came across my Let It Ride tips. Now you’ll know that the game’s side bets aren’t reasonable and should be avoided at all costs.

The 5 Card Bonus side bet, which pays out extra jackpots for forming high-quality poker hands upon showdown, carries a 13.77 percent house edge – at best. The presence of alternative pay tables used by various live and online venues further muddies the waters because slight adjustments to the payouts can wreak havoc on a player’s expected return rate.

The table below highlights the various pay table iterations you can expect to encounter during your Let It Ride tour of duty, along with the overall house edge offered by each pay scheme:

As you can see, not all tables are created equally. It’s always a good idea to have a Royal Flush, but there’s a significant difference between having one at six and nine.

The house edge rates offered by each of these pay tables is shown in the table below:

As the data reveals, the best pay table for the 5 Card Bonus side bet offers 20,000 to 1 for a royal flush, 2,000 to 1 for a straight flush, and the familiar 25 / 9 / 6 pay scheme for making straights, three of a kind, and two pair, respectively. Any alterations from this pay table immediately increase the house edge by nearly 10 percent – which is simply absurd from a casino gambling strategy standpoint.

And like I said before, even that “optimal” pay table for the 5 Card Bonus side bet runs a 13.77 percent house edge, which is purely unbeatable and on par with the classic sucker games like the Big Six wheel.

As for the 3 Card Bonus side bet, which pays out smaller rewards for landing quality three card poker hands, to begin with, my advice remains the same. Just ignore this bet and act like it’s not even there, as the standard 50 / 40 / 30 / 6 / 3 / 1 pay table carries a high house edge of 7.09 percent.

In fact, the only time you should ever tango with the 3 Card Bonus side bet when playing Let It Ride is at the Borgata casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey. There, the wager uses a slightly better 50 / 40 / 30 / 6 / 4 / 1 pay table, and that single alteration from 3 to 4 lowers the house edge all the way down to 2.14 percent.

If you want to know how to win at Let It Ride poker, one thing you must do is avoid the side bets.

I cannot express enough the importance of knowing the statistics like these regarding Let It Ride and gambling in general. Check out this guide to poker if you’re interested in becoming a pro.

Getting carried away with a fast-paced casino game like Let It Ride can be easy. However, that’s not the ideal approach if you want to have any chance of making a profit.

As you’ve probably heard, the house always wins.

That means the more games you play, the more you’re going to lose. This is the exact reason why you should follow my Let It Ride tips.

Possibly the best Let It Ride poker strategy you’ll find is that practice makes perfect. Getting used to the playstyle might take a while since it’s not the same as Poker or Blackjack. However, the more games you play, the better understanding you will have of it.

For those of you who are dying to get into the action, head over to the best US casino online and give it a shot. After all, you can get more practice in online and be even more prepared for your next trip to the casino.

That concludes my Let It Ride strategy guide. Now it’s time for you to figure out how to become a Poker shark.

Footnote:

• General casino math is from the Center for Gambling Research.