Three unique online casino table games you should try once.
There are a lot of major differences between land-based and online casinos. The most obvious, of course, is the convenience of playing online. There’s no need to travel. You can play anytime, from anywhere. Just log onto your desktop, hop on the couch with a tablet, or whip out your smartphone.
But there are more subtle conveniences worth noting. The types of differences that don’t get mentioned nearly so often as quicker games, lower stakes, or higher return percentages. I’m talking about the fact that online casinos have no space limitations.
Internet casinos can provide their players with as many games as they like. They will never run out of seats, no matter how many players are participating. Because of this, they don’t have to stick to the ‘most popular games’, which often means a much more interesting selection to be found.
Unique Online Casino Games Worth Trying
Not every “unique” game is one I’d recommend playing. In fact, I don’t even recommend playing the following games too much. I do find them interesting and entertaining, to a point, but they don’t have a very appealing house edge, compared to the more ‘popular‘ variety (which kinda helps explain why those are so popular in the first place).
With that being said and emphasized, I do recommend playing them at least once for the experience and fun factor.
#1 Red Dog Poker
Red Dog Poker is not a complicated game, and has very little to do with poker, aside from its use of cards. It’s more like Ace-Deucey than anything else. You place a wager, then 2 cards are dealt. The lowest on goes on the left, highest on the right. You can then double your bet, if you want, followed by a third card being dealt between the first two.
To win, you need the third card’s value to land between the first two cards. A 5, for example, would win between a 2 and 7. A 9 would not win between 2 and 7. Payout values vary by odds. The wider the range, the lower the payout; closer the range, higher the payout.
With a single, 52-card deck, you can expect a house edge of 3.15%. One thing that makes this game so unique is that, unlike blackjack, the more decks you add, the lower the house edge becomes. Increasing the shoe to 8 decks will give you the lowest possible house edge of 2.75%. Of course, that’s still unfavorable compared to 1.06% in baccarat, or ~0.5% in blackjack.
#2 Ultimate Hold’em Poker
If you like Texas Hold’em, but aren’t the super intelligent type that’s capable of calculating expected values and pot odds on a whim, or a psychology major who can expertly read the facial twitches of other players, Ultimate Hold’em Poker may be the game for you.
In this version, you do not compete against anyone but yourself. The object is to make a strong enough hand to get a payout; akin to video poker, except this time you can make additional bets per street as the flop, turn and river cards are revealed.
The house edge on this one is 2.18%, which is at least better than single-zero roulette (2.7%).
#3 Casino War
No card game could possibly be more simple. Perhaps that’s why this is one of the most popular card games for small children, known simply as ‘War‘. You get one card. The dealer gets one card. High card wins.
If there’s a tie, you can surrender (forfeit half of bet) or double your bet to “go to war”. In war, the player and dealer each get another card, and again, high card wins. However, war is a risky thing. If you win, you only get paid even money on the raise—the original bet is a push. If you lose on the war, you lose both bets.
The house edge on this game varies by the number of decks (6 is most common) and the “tie-after-tie” rule (getting a tie during a war). If there’s no bonus on tie+tie, the edge is 2.88%. With a 2x payout bonus, the edge drops to 2.33%. Some online casino table games manufacturers will offer a 3x bonus payout, dropping the edge to a much more affable 1.24%.
