Editorial illustration for the lesson on casino poker bankroll: hands per hour and trip planning, in the Mayfair Casino School.
Casino poker bankroll: hands per hour and trip planning
Carnival games burn slowly but they do burn. Here's how to set a session bankroll that matches the maths and keeps the evening in proportion.
AC
Annabel Cavendish
Editor in Chief · Reviewed 14 May 2026
Annabel
0:000:00
Welcome to the lesson on casino poker bankroll.
I'm Annabel, and bankroll planning for casino poker starts with a straightforward calculation and becomes more nuanced once you account for variance differences between the six games.
Let me work through both.
The expected loss for any session is your ante, multiplied by hands per hour, multiplied by hours planned, multiplied by the effective average bet per hand, multiplied by the house edge.
In Casino Hold'em, you call approximately eighty-two percent of hands at twice the ante, giving about two point six times the ante per hand.
In Ultimate Texas Hold'em, including all pre-flop, flop, and river bets, the average across all hands works out to approximately four point one five times the ante.
At a ten-pound ante over two hours, here are the expected losses by game under optimal strategy.
Three Card Poker at three point three seven percent and fifty hands per hour: approximately forty-two pounds.
Casino Hold'em at two point one six percent and forty-two hands per hour: approximately forty-seven pounds.
Ultimate Texas Hold'em at two point one nine percent and thirty-eight hands per hour: approximately sixty-nine pounds.
Caribbean Stud at five point two two percent and thirty-eight hands per hour: approximately eighty-one pounds.
Let It Ride at three point five one percent and thirty-two hands per hour: approximately forty-two pounds.
Pai Gow at two point eight four percent and twenty-seven hands per hour: approximately fifteen pounds.
These figures are medians, not ceilings.
Actual session outcomes spread around them based on variance, and the variance differs significantly across the games.
Pai Gow has the lowest variance of the six because of the approximately forty percent push rate.
When four hands in ten resolve with no money changing hands, the range of session outcomes narrows.
It's difficult to lose two hundred pounds at a twenty-pound ante Pai Gow table in two hours; it's straightforwardly possible at Caribbean Stud or Let It Ride at the same ante and time.
Let It Ride has the highest variance.
The standard deviation relative to a single initial bet is approximately five point one seven, substantially above any other game in the group.
Sessions at Let It Ride swing more widely than the edge figure suggests: a flush or straight flush hitting with three bets in action creates a dramatic upswing; extended runs without them produce steady, quiet losses that can add up.
A practical bankroll floor for a two-hour London session: fifty times the ante for Pai Gow and Casino Hold'em, seventy-five times the ante for Three Card Poker and Ultimate Texas Hold'em, and one hundred times the ante for Let It Ride and Caribbean Stud.
At a ten-pound ante, those come to five hundred, seven hundred and fifty, and one thousand pounds respectively.
These figures cover expected losses many times over while providing a buffer against normal negative variance runs.
The Hippodrome Casino at Leicester Square runs Three Card Poker on its main floor at table minimums of five to ten pounds during weekday evenings, rising during peak weekend hours.
Aspers at Westfield Stratford runs similar minimums across its carnival pit.
At a ten-pound ante at Three Card Poker, a two-hour session's expected loss is approximately forty-two pounds.
Your session bankroll should be at least five hundred pounds; your stop-loss should be set before you sit down.
Once you've lost that amount, you leave, regardless of how the session feels.
This is not a mathematical strategy; it's a budget constraint.
The edge doesn't change because you're down three hundred pounds.
Neither does your probability of recovery.
What changes is how much of your planned budget you've committed.
The UK Gambling Commission's published safer gambling guidance recommends pre-commitment as the most reliable form of loss control: deciding the limit before sitting down and honouring it unconditionally.
That applies to casino poker sessions exactly as it applies to any other form of play.
The carnival pit is well-designed to extend sessions.
The decision to stop is yours to make, and it's most easily made before you've sat down.
Know the expected loss.
Set the stop-loss.
Start with expectation, because bankroll planning without a realistic expectation of losses is just guesswork with chips.
The purpose of a session bankroll in carnival poker is not to cover an improbable catastrophic run. It's to cover the expected loss for the planned session duration plus enough variance buffer that a normal negative run doesn't end the evening prematurely or push you to re-buy in a way you hadn't budgeted for. Getting this right requires three inputs: your ante size, the expected hands per hour for the game you're playing, and the house edge under optimal strategy. Everything else is arithmetic.
Expected loss = ante x hands per hour x hours planned x effective average bet multiplier x house edge. The "effective average bet multiplier" accounts for the fact that in games like Three Card Poker you sometimes raise (adding a Play bet) and sometimes fold (losing only the ante). In Three Card Poker at Q-6-4 strategy, you raise approximately 50% of hands, giving an average bet per hand of roughly 1.5x the ante. In Casino Hold'em, you call approximately 82% of hands at 2x, giving an average of about 2.6x the ante. In Let It Ride, if you pull back bets correctly you average well below 3x.
The Expected Loss Calculation by Game
At a £10 ante over two hours at each game, the expected losses under optimal strategy are as follows. Three Card Poker at 3.37% edge, 50 hands per hour, 1.5x average bet: £10 x 100 x 1.5 x 3.37% = £50.55 expected loss over two hours. Casino Hold'em at 2.16%, 42 hands per hour, 2.6x average bet: £10 x 84 x 2.6 x 2.16% = £47.16. Ultimate Texas Hold'em at 2.19%, 38 hands per hour, 4.15x average bet (Wizard's figure): £10 x 76 x 4.15 x 2.19% = £68.89. Caribbean Stud at 5.22%, 38 hands per hour, 2.045x average bet: £10 x 76 x 2.045 x 5.22% = £81.10. Let It Ride at 3.51% of initial bet, 32 hands, 1.232x average bet: £10 x 32 x 3 x 3.51% x 1.232 = approximately £41.56. Pai Gow at 2.84%, 27 hands per hour, 1x bet: £10 x 54 x 1 x 2.84% = £15.34.
These expected losses are medians: you'll finish above them roughly half the time and below them roughly half the time. What the variance means is that the range around those medians can be considerable, particularly in Let It Ride and Caribbean Stud where a single large hand can swing the session dramatically in either direction.
Variance and the Practical Bankroll Floor
Standard deviation, which measures how widely actual results spread around the expected value, differs significantly across the six games. we document Let It Ride's standard deviation at 5.17 per initial bet: extremely high for a carnival game. At a £10 three-bet opening (£30 total), one standard deviation is approximately £51.70 in either direction per 100 hands. A two-hour Let It Ride session can routinely produce results that are £100-200 away from the expected loss in either direction.
Pai Gow Poker has the lowest variance of the six games because of the 40% push rate. When four in ten hands resolve with no exchange of money, the range of session outcomes narrows substantially. You're unlikely to lose £200 at Pai Gow in two hours at £20 per hand; you're quite capable of it at Caribbean Stud in the same time at the same stake.
A practical bankroll floor for a two-hour session in London: 50 times the ante for Pai Gow and Casino Hold'em (low variance, moderate edge), 75 times the ante for Three Card Poker and Ultimate Texas Hold'em (moderate variance, lower-to-moderate edge), and 100 times the ante for Let It Ride and Caribbean Stud (higher variance or higher edge). At a £10 ante those come to £500, £750, and £1,000 respectively. These figures cover expected losses many times over while providing a buffer against normal negative variance.
The Re-Buy Question and Session Discipline
Deciding before you sit down how much you're willing to lose in a session, and not buying back in beyond that, is not a strategy that improves your mathematical expectation. It's a constraint on downside that keeps the evening within your planned budget. The casino's edge doesn't change because you've lost your first buy-in. Neither does your probability of recovery. What changes is the amount you've committed.
The UKGC's safer gambling guidance is explicit about pre-commitment as the most reliable harm-reduction tool: setting a loss limit before gambling and sticking to it. That's not a moralising point; it's a structural one. Carnival poker sessions are manageable when the budget is defined before the cards are dealt. They become problematic when the budget is defined by how much is still in your wallet at 2am.
A sensible approach for a UK casino visit: set your total session budget. From it, calculate your ante size at the game you intend to play. Check that the ante produces an expected loss within the budget for your planned session duration. If the expected loss at your minimum comfortable ante exceeds the budget, either shorten the session or choose a lower-edge game. At the Hippodrome Casino at Leicester Square, where Three Card Poker runs at a £5-10 minimum on the main floor, a two-hour session at £10 ante and optimal Q-6-4 strategy produces an expected loss of roughly £42. That's the number to build your bankroll around before you walk in. The bankroll calculator and casino poker trainers on this site can help you model this before you leave home.
