Red Dog is, for all intents and purposes, a slight variation of “in between” or “Acey Deucey.” So, if you’ve played Acey Deucey, you’ve played Red Dog. Place your wager and you’ll get two cards. After seeing the cards, you can choose to fold and lose your original wager or “bet,” which doubles the bet that a third card will fall sequentially between the first two cards. If it does, you win. If it doesn’t, you don’t.
It sounds simple and it is, and that’s why it’s so popular. We offer a standardized version of the game here at Bovada, but there are variations that are different as the regions they come from. In China’s Liaoning province, the minimum number of players in any game is four and each player antes before the first card is turned. Two cards are then dealt up to the first player and that player then bets up to the pot limit whether or not the third card is going to fall between the first two.
In the US and in the Bovada online casino, however, there are two decks of cards involved. This adds another dynamic to the game due to the extra number of similar type cards. Beyond that, most of the other rules followed by United States players are similar to those that are observed in the Liaoning province, where it is theorized that the game originated.
Players also get two chances to win when they play Red Dog: when the third card is valued between the first two and if the three cards dealt are the same. Your payout also varies based on the spread. If you nail the spread perfectly and your card falls exactly between the first and second card, your payout is 5:1. Two cards in the spread between your first and second card? 4:1 payout. Three cards give you a 2:1 payout and if you end up with a 4-card spread, the payout is 1:1. If you’re really lucky and have three of a kind, your payout is 11:1, which is nothing to sneeze at.
One note: when playing in-between, if a player’s third card matches either of the first two cards, they’ve “hit the post” and most pay double their bet. This rule doesn’t exist when you play red-dog. If you match either of the cards, you simply lose your bet, no more, no less.