Spelling out "What is casino poker rake?" starts with the rules. Baccarat and the casino poker games share a table, a dealer and a fixed house edge, and all of them are simpler than they look. Baccarat asks only which hand to back, while games such as three card poker, Caribbean stud and ultimate Texas holdem let a player make a few decisions against the dealer. Knowing the rules step by step and the edge of each bet is most of what tells them apart.
Three card poker is played against the dealer with three cards each, and is worth playing mainly for its speed and its ante bonus rather than its odds. Caribbean stud poker has a house edge above five percent on the main bet, higher than most table games. Four card poker is called by that plain name, dealt with five cards to the player and six to the dealer. Mississippi stud is played against a pay table instead of the dealer, and is worth playing only with its high edge kept in mind.
Baccarat can be played at home with a standard deck or several, one player acting as banker and the drawing rules printed on a card for reference. In casinos, baccarat cards are not reused: after a shoe is dealt, the cards are usually destroyed or sold as souvenirs, partly because players bend and squeeze them during the reveal in some versions. Online and live games shuffle virtual or fresh decks for every shoe, so no card carries marks from a shoe before.
Ultimate Texas holdem is played against the dealer: each player posts an ante and a blind, sees two cards, and may raise three or four times the ante before the flop or less later. To deal ultimate Texas holdem, the dealer gives two cards to each player and to the house, then turns five shared cards in stages. What a casino poker rake means is different: in poker played between players, the house takes a small share of each pot instead of holding an edge, which is how card rooms earn.
Two nines are a tie like any other equal total, so tie bets win and bets placed on banker or player are usually returned.
After ante and blind, a player may raise three or four times the ante before the flop and less later. A rake, by contrast, is the pot share card rooms take.
Three card poker pits three cards against the dealer's three and is chosen mainly for its speed and its ante bonus rather than for favourable odds.
Caribbean stud carries a house edge above five percent on its main bet, and Mississippi stud, played against a pay table, also has a high edge.