Four Card Frenzy: How to Play and Understand the Payouts

Four Card Frenzy is a four-card poker table game from Galaxy Gaming in which you see your cards before choosing a Raise or a fold. Under optimal play, the house edge is about 2.71% of the Ante, or about $2.71 for every $100 Ante. You play one hand against the dealer: make the best four-card hand from five cards, discard the fifth, and decide whether to place the Raise. Wins and losses are settled on the Ante, Raise and Odds bets.

The key assumption behind that headline percentage is its base: 2.71% is measured against the Ante, whereas the figure measured against the average final wager of 3.14 Ante units is 0.86%. These figures apply under optimal strategy and the rules described on the Wizard of Odds page last updated on 3 August 2026.

What is Four Card Frenzy?

Four Card Frenzy is a dealer-banked poker game in which your four-card hand competes against the dealer’s hand, not against other players at the table.

Galaxy Gaming developed the game. According to Wizard of Odds, its Nevada debut was at Santa Fe Station on 17 January 2018. It is related to Crazy 4 Poker, but that does not make their rules or paytables interchangeable. The Galaxy Gaming product page describes the game and its main bets.

The main game uses Ante, Odds and Raise. You place Ante and Odds before seeing your cards; Raise is the additional bet you make if you continue. Prime and 4 Card Bonus are optional side bets.

Winning the hand comparison is only part of the settlement. In particular, the Odds payout depends on both your hand category and whether you or the dealer wins.

Rules step by step

Start with equal Ante and Odds bets, take five cards, and choose whether to continue with a Raise or fold after selecting your best four-card hand.

1. Place equal Ante and Odds bets. These are the opening bets for the main game.
2. Look at your five cards. Choose the four that form your strongest hand and discard the remaining card.
3. Choose a Raise or a fold. With a pair of aces or better, you may Raise up to three times the Ante. With a weaker hand, continuing requires a Raise exactly equal to the Ante.
4. If you fold, you lose Ante and Odds. Any side bets already placed remain in action.
5. If you continue, the dealer reveals a hand. Under the Wizard rules, the dealer opens, or qualifies, with king high or better.
6. Settle the bets separately. If the dealer does not qualify, Ante pushes—meaning it is returned without profit—and Raise wins. Check Odds against its paytable. Full settlement by result (+1 and −1 are in units of the same bet):

The permitted Raise size is a rule, not a recommendation. Being allowed to Raise up to three times the Ante does not explain the full decision; the strategy below tells you when to use the larger bet.

Dealer qualification also does not settle every bet in the same way. Keep Ante, Raise and Odds separate when following the payout.

How to build the best four-card hand from five cards

Keep the four cards that make the highest-ranking Four Card Frenzy hand; the discarded card does not contribute to the comparison.

Use this ranking from strongest to weakest:

This order differs from familiar five-card poker rankings: four of a kind beats a straight flush, and three of a kind beats a flush.

Check for the strongest available category before discarding anything. Automatically throwing away the lowest card can break a straight or flush while leaving a higher card that adds nothing to the hand.

Only after selecting the final four cards should you compare the hand with the Raise threshold.

When should you Raise or fold?

Use a large Raise with a pair of aces or better, a small Raise with K-Q-8-4 or better, and fold everything weaker. Examples: K-Q-8-4 is a small Raise; K-Q-8-3 is a fold; Q-J-10-8 in mixed suits is a fold (queen high, no pair, straight or flush); Q-J-10-9 in mixed suits is already a straight, which outranks a pair of aces, so it is a large Raise; a pair of aces with any two other cards is a large Raise.

Apply the decisions in this order:

• Pair of aces or better: Raise three times the Ante.
• Below a pair of aces, but at least K-Q-8-4: Raise exactly the Ante.
• Below K-Q-8-4: Fold.

K-Q-8-4 means king, queen, eight and four. It is the continuation threshold for a hand that does not qualify for the large Raise, not a requirement to hold those exact cards.

Diagram of the Raise or fold decision in Four Card Frenzy: pair of aces or higher means a 3x raise, K-Q-8-4 or higher a 1x raise, everything else a fold

Teaching diagram of the strategy from the Wizard of Odds table. Not an official game screen.

This simplified KQ84 strategy is very close to optimal, but not identical: Wizard’s calculation puts its additional house edge at 0.000089 percentage points.

Under optimal play (not the KQ84 shortcut), the large Raise occurs about 18.6% of the time, the small Raise about 57.9% and a fold about 23.5%. These are calculated decision frequencies, not session targets. Follow the hand in front of you rather than trying to reproduce those proportions.

How to read the Odds paytable

Find your hand’s row, then select the column for the winner of the hand comparison. The “to one” figures show profit relative to the Odds bet, excluding the return of that bet.

The following paytable and the 2.71% headline figure come from the Wizard of Odds full tables.

For example, a winning flush pays 1.5 to one on Odds. With a $5 Odds bet, that means $7.50 profit on that bet; returning the original stake is not additional profit.

The “dealer wins” column describes a payout to you when your qualifying strong hand loses—a bad beat. It does not show the dealer’s winnings. The Bad Beat Bonus values here are taken from the Wizard table.

This excerpt does not establish settlement rules for weaker hands, tied hands or every other situation. Nor should “n/a” be replaced with an assumed payout. Consult the complete table rules for those cases.

Worked hand: a winning flush

In this example, your flush beats the dealer’s pair of fours and produces $27.50 net profit across Ante, Raise and Odds.

Assume Ante is $5 and Odds is $5. Your best four-card hand is a flush, which ranks above a pair of aces, so the strategy calls for a Raise of three times the Ante: $15.

The dealer opens with a pair of fours. That hand qualifies but loses to your flush. Following the Wizard example:

Diagram of the $27.50 flush example: Ante +$5, Raise +$15, Odds +$7.50

Teaching example: Ante $5, Odds $5, Raise 3x; the flush beats the dealer's pair of fours.

The calculation is $5 + $15 + $7.50 = $27.50. It excludes returned stakes and any side-bet results. Amounts match the source example without additional rounding.

The Odds profit uses the flush row under “player wins.” A different comparison result would require the appropriate settlement rather than reusing that payout.

What does the 2.71% house edge mean?

Under these assumptions, $100 of Ante loses $2.71 on average; measured against all wagers, the figure is 0.86%. These describe the same expected loss using different calculation bases.

The optimal-play figure is 2.71% of the Ante. In the house edge calculator, enter 2.71 in “Enter a custom house edge” and your Ante, not the total of all bets in the hand, in “Bet Size per Round”: the calculator applies the percentage to the whole entered stake. To enter the average total wager (3.14 Ante units) instead, use 0.86%.

The calculation base is the amount against which expected loss is expressed. Here, it is the Ante rather than all the money wagered during the hand; how house edge works explains that distinction.

Four Card Frenzy also requires an equal Odds bet and, when you continue, a Raise. Wizard’s calculation gives an average final wager of 3.14 Ante units. Dividing the house edge by that average final wager gives the element of risk: 0.86%.

Changing the denominator does not improve the game or reduce its expected monetary loss. It changes how that loss is expressed. The average final wager is also an average across decisions, not a fixed stake for every hand.

Put plainly, this is math, not a winning strategy.

Side bets: 4 Card Bonus and Prime

Both side bets are optional and have separate house edges: 3.80% for 4 Card Bonus and 4.74% for Prime in the calculations described here.

These bets are not silently included in the main game’s Ante-based percentage. Adding them changes the set of wagers whose results you are tracking.

Prime pays by how many of your five cards share a colour. Wizard’s 4.74% is for the table in which five cards of one colour pay 6 to 1, four pay 1 to 1 and every other hand loses. Galaxy Gaming offers two Prime paytables, so check which one your table uses: under another table 4.74% does not apply. 4 Card Bonus pays on the best four-card hand from your original five cards, from a pair of queens upwards; 3.80% refers to the Wizard table.

Where the calculation stops applying

The calculation covers one rules version and optimal play; an operator may use different conditions. Do not transfer the percentages to a different paytable or ruleset without checking them.

Before sitting down, verify the Odds paytable, dealer qualification, permitted Raise sizes and side-bet terms. Common practical errors are:

• Choosing the wrong four cards: identify the best hand before applying the Raise threshold.
• Using another poker game’s rankings: follow the Four Card Frenzy order.
• Reading an Odds multiplier as total cash returned: distinguish profit from returned stakes.
• Using the wrong Odds column: the comparison result determines which payout applies.
• Treating an Ante-based percentage as a percentage of all wagers: keep the calculation base explicit.

Before placing a bet, you should be able to explain which cards you are keeping, why you are raising or folding, and which Odds row applies. If a settlement rule remains unclear, ask the dealer before the hand begins.