Criss Cross Poker Hand Rankings
Criss Cross Poker uses the standard poker ladder, with one twist that decides most hands at the table: the bottom of the ladder is split into a high pair that pays, a low pair that pushes, and a small pair that is worth nothing at all.
Every Paying Hand, Strongest First
With an example of each and how often it turns up in five cards.
There is no dealer hand and nothing to qualify against. Each wager is graded straight off this ladder, so a single strong hand can pay on several bets at once.
High Pair, Low Pair, No Hand
The part of the game people get wrong. Not every pair is a winner.
In most poker-based table games a pair is a pair. In Criss Cross Poker the rank of that pair decides whether you get paid, get your money back, or lose it. There are three tiers and the cut-off points are fixed.
High Pair: Jacks through Aces
Pays 1 to 1. A pair of Jacks, Queens, Kings or Aces is the lowest hand on the pay table that actually wins money.
Low Pair: 6s through 10s
Pushes. A pair of 6s, 7s, 8s, 9s or 10s wins nothing and loses nothing. Your bet is simply returned.
Pair of 5s or Lower
Loses. A pair of 2s, 3s, 4s or 5s is treated as no hand at all, exactly the same as unpaired junk.
Two pair is never affected by any of this.
The high/low split applies only to a single pair. Two pair, trips and everything above them pay on their own line of the table no matter which ranks are involved. A pair of 3s alongside a pair of 2s is still two pair and still pays 2 to 1.
The Same Ladder Grades Everything
Across, Down and the Five Card Bonus all read from the rankings above.
You never compare one hand against another in this game. Every wager is scored on its own five cards against the same ranking ladder, and each of your two hands is exactly five cards (your two hole cards plus three community cards from the cross).
Across & Down
Each line is graded on its own five cards. The centre card counts in both, so one card can lift or ruin both hands at once.
Middle
Graded on whichever of your two hands finishes higher, using exactly the same rankings.
Five Card Bonus
Scored on the five community cards alone, ignoring your hole cards, on its own pay table.
One standard 52-card deck, no jokers. Seven cards are in play each round: your two hole cards and the five community cards in the cross.
What Each Hand Pays
What Actually Turns Up
The bottom three tiers decide almost every hand you play.
What appears most often?
Out of all possible five-card hands
Rankings Stick Once You Have Played a Few Hands
Deal yourself a free hand and watch the high pair, low pair and losing pair settle for real.
Criss Cross Poker is a table game from AGS, developed by Ron LaDuca and In Bet Gaming. Pay tables and house-edge figures follow the published analysis at Wizard of Odds; the hand probabilities on this page were computed from all 2,598,960 five-card combinations.