Playing Two Unpaired High Cards in Criss Cross Poker
Six starting hands run from jack to ace without pairing. Exactly one of them, Q-J suited, is worth a 3x Across bet, and the reason is the number of straights it can appear in.
- A-K
- A-Q
- A-J
- K-Q
- K-J
- Q-J
- 3x Q-J suited
- 1x every other J to A
Q-J suited sits in three different straights. That third straight is the whole difference.
Identify the Starting Combination
Six unpaired hands can be built from the jack, queen, king and ace. Before you decide anything, work out which one you are holding and whether it is suited.
These are the hands people mean by “two big cards”: A-K, A-Q, A-J, K-Q, K-J and Q-J. None of them is a made hand. Each needs the board to pair one of your cards, or to fill a straight or a flush, before it pays anything at all. What separates them is not how pretty they look but a single mechanical fact: how many five-card straights the two ranks can sit in. That number, plus whether the two cards share a suit, fixes the expected value of the Across bet exactly.
We evaluated every one of them against all 19,600 three-card boards that can be dealt from the remaining 50 cards. The figures below are that enumeration. Nothing is sampled and nothing is rounded up from an estimate.
One straight available
A-K, A-Q and A-J all reach for the same single straight, A-K-Q-J-10, so their Across figures are identical to six decimal places. They are literally the same number, not three numbers that happen to look alike.
- A-K 1 straight Suited−0.030663 Offsuit−0.131224
- A-Q 1 straight Suited−0.030663 Offsuit−0.131224
- A-J 1 straight Suited−0.030663 Offsuit−0.131224
An ace-high holding gains nothing from the gap between its two ranks. A-K and A-J price the same because both live in exactly one straight and neither can reach a second.
Two straights available
Dropping the ace opens a second route. K-Q and K-J can each complete A-K-Q-J-10 or K-Q-J-10-9, and the extra straight is worth about 0.024 per unit on the Across bet.
- K-Q 2 straights Suited−0.006684 Offsuit−0.111633
- K-J 2 straights Suited−0.006684 Offsuit−0.111633
K-Q suited is the near miss of this group. At −0.006684 it is close enough to break-even that it still rounds to a 1x, and a 1x is what it gets.
Three straights available
Q-J can complete A-K-Q-J-10, K-Q-J-10-9 or Q-J-10-9-8. Suited, that third route is enough to push the Across bet into positive territory. It is the only unpaired hand in the game that gets there.
- Q-J 3 straights Suited+0.017296 Offsuit−0.092041
Q-J offsuit is still a 1x. The three straights help, but without a flush to back them up the hand does not clear zero.
Straight count is the only thing separating these six hands. Rank prestige is not a factor.
The two ante bets carry their own price and it moves the same way. Holding an ace-high hand the ante is worth −0.213469 per unit suited and −0.230204 offsuit; a king-high hand −0.207041 and −0.223673; Q-J suited −0.200612 and Q-J offsuit −0.217143. You do not choose the antes, so those figures are the cost of being dealt in rather than a decision. They are listed here because they belong in any honest accounting of what the hand is worth.
The Only Unpaired 3x
Across every one of the 169 starting hands, exactly one unpaired holding has a positive Across bet. It is Q-J suited, and it wins by 0.017296 of a unit.
The Across decision is the one decision in Criss Cross Poker you can solve completely, because you make it knowing only your two hole cards. Bet three units when the line bet is worth more than it costs, and one unit when it is not. We ran every unpaired jack-to-ace hand against all 19,600 three-card boards to find out which side of zero each one falls on. Only one crosses it.
| Hand | Straights available | Suited line EV | Offsuit line EV |
|---|---|---|---|
| A-K | 1 | −0.030663 | −0.131224 |
| A-Q | 1 | −0.030663 | −0.131224 |
| A-J | 1 | −0.030663 | −0.131224 |
| K-Q | 2 | −0.006684 | −0.111633 |
| K-J | 2 | −0.006684 | −0.111633 |
| Q-J only positive | 3 | +0.017296 | −0.092041 |
Every figure in the suited column is negative except one. Every figure in the offsuit column is negative without exception. That single positive cell is the whole argument of this page.
Why the third straight decides it
A-K, A-Q and A-J can each appear in exactly one five-card straight, A-K-Q-J-10, because the ace caps the ladder and nothing runs above it. That is why their expected values are identical to six decimal places: they are not three similar hands, they are the same hand as far as the arithmetic is concerned. K-Q and K-J reach two straights, A-K-Q-J-10 and K-Q-J-10-9. Q-J reaches three, A-K-Q-J-10, K-Q-J-10-9 and Q-J-10-9-8. Each extra straight is worth roughly 0.024 of a unit, and Q-J suited starts close enough to zero that the third one carries it over the line.
Suitedness is doing the rest of the work. Q-J offsuit has the same three straights and still prices at −0.092041, because without a flush behind it the hand cannot pay often enough. You need both the straight count and the shared suit.
This is the rule the rest of the site runs on. The coach at our free table calls 3x on Q-J suited and 1x on every other unpaired jack-to-ace hand, and the same split appears on the printable strategy chart so you can check it away from the screen. If you ever see the coach and the chart disagree on one of these six hands, the chart is the one to trust, because both are generated from the same enumeration.
Figures That Circulate, and What We Can Actually Say
Expected values in the range of $15.40 to $19.70 circulate for these hands. It is worth being exact about which part of that we can stand behind and which part nobody can, ourselves included.
What we can give you exactly
- The Across-bet expected value for all six hands, suited and offsuit, to six decimal places. That is the table above.
- The ante figures for each group, from the same enumeration.
- The resulting decision: 3x with Q-J suited, 1x with everything else from jack to ace.
What no single number can cover
- A total value per hand. The Down and Middle bets are chosen after community cards are exposed, so the amount you end up staking depends on cards nobody has seen at the Across decision.
- Any figure that assumes a fixed later bet size. Change the assumption and the total moves with it.
- We have solved the Across decision exhaustively. We have not solved the full three-decision game for these hands, and we will not publish a number we have not computed.
So take the exact Across figures, use them to make the only decision that can be made in advance, and treat any single-number valuation of an unpaired high card as an assumption rather than a result.
Make the Correct Across Bet
This is the first decision of the hand and the only one you make blind. Q-J suited raises to 3x. Every other unpaired jack-to-ace hand bets 1x.
Both antes are posted before any card is dealt, so by the time you look at your two hole cards you are already two units in. The Across bet is what you add to that, and it is a choice between one unit and three. There is no fold worth considering here: folding forfeits the Across ante outright, which costs a full unit, and every hand on this page loses less than that by playing on. The full ordering of the round is set out in the how to play guide.
Q-J suited
The line bet returns +0.017296 per unit. A bet that returns more than it costs should be made as large as the table allows, so take the maximum.
A-K, A-Q, A-J, K-Q, K-J, and Q-J offsuit
Every one of these prices between −0.006684 and −0.131224 per unit. Each is a small loss, so you make the smallest bet you are allowed to make, and you never make it three times as large.
What a $10 ante actually commits
Put the 1x line into money. At a $10 ante, holding any unpaired jack-to-ace hand other than Q-J suited, this is everything you have staked at the moment the Across decision is finished.
| Wager | Amount |
|---|---|
| Across Ante | $10 |
| Down Ante | $10 |
| Across Bet at 1x | $10 |
| Total committed | $30 |
With Q-J suited the same table reads $50, because the Across bet becomes $30 at 3x while the two antes stay at $10 each. That is the only line on the page that changes, and it is the only unpaired hand that earns the change.
There is no fixed $40 committed before the community cards. A figure like that assumes both antes and a Down bet are on the felt at the same time as the Across bet, and they are not. The Down bet is placed after the two horizontal community cards are exposed, so at the moment you finish the Across decision your total is $30 at 1x or $50 at 3x, never $40. The order of the three decisions is the part of this game that most often gets described wrongly, and it matters here because the whole point of the Down bet is that you get to see cards first.
Maximum means the table maximum on this bet, normally 3x the ante. It never means raising your ante.
One thing this decision does not depend on is what the other players are holding, or what happened on the last hand. Your two hole cards fix the Across figure completely, and the figure is the same every single time those two cards appear. That is why the Across decision can be reduced to a rule you memorise, while the two that follow cannot.
Use the Across Cards to Choose the Down Bet
Once the Across wager is settled the two horizontal outer cards are turned over. You now know four cards, and the second decision is nothing like the first.
The Across bet was made in the dark. The Down bet is not. By the time it is offered you hold two known cards and can see two more on the table, and those two are already part of your Across hand. Read them before you size anything.
A 3x Down bet becomes more attractive when
- An exposed card pairs one of your hole cards. A jack, queen, king or ace on the horizontal row that matches what you hold turns a drawing hand into a paying one, because a pair of jacks or better already pays 1 to 1.
- The four known cards make a strong straight shape. Q-J in your hand with a 10 and a king showing is a very different proposition from Q-J with a deuce and a seven showing.
- Three or four of the known cards share a suit. A suited holding with suited help on the board still has a flush live in both directions.
- Several routes to a paying hand are open at once. A shape that can finish as a high pair or a straight or a flush is worth more than one that needs a single specific card.
A 1x Down bet fits when
- The exposed cards miss you entirely. No pair, no straight help, no shared suit, and your two high cards are still just two high cards.
- The straight is dead. The exposed ranks leave no five-card run that includes both of your cards.
- Your only remaining route is pairing. Pairing is the most common way these hands win, but on its own it is a thin reason to triple a bet.
- You started offsuit. Without a flush behind it, an unpaired holding has one fewer way to be worth the extra units.
Where our analysis stops, stated plainly
We solved the Across decision exactly. Every figure in sections 1 to 3 is an exhaustive enumeration over all 19,600 three-card boards, and it is exact because that decision is made with only your two hole cards known.
The Down and Middle decisions are different in kind. They depend on cards revealed partway through the hand, so the right answer changes from board to board and cannot be reduced to one fixed number for a starting hand. The guidance above is a reading of which features of the exposed cards make the extra units worth staking. It is not a computed expected value, and we are not going to dress it up as one. If you want a number for these two decisions, it has to be a number for a specific board, not for “K-Q suited” in general.
Evaluate Both Directions Before the Middle Bet
By the third decision six of the seven cards are known. The Middle bet is graded on the stronger of your two completed hands, so you are looking for the best of two results, not the average of them.
At the Middle decision you can see your two hole cards, the two horizontal cards exposed before the Down bet, and the two vertical cards exposed after it. Only the centre card is still face down, and it belongs to both lines at once. Build the Across hand and the Down hand in your head before you size anything, then judge the wager on whichever one is stronger.
3x fits when
- One of the two lines is already a paying hand, most often a pair of jacks or better made by an exposed card matching a hole card.
- Either line is one card from a straight or a flush and the centre card can still complete it.
- Both lines have something going on, so the stronger of the two is very likely to qualify whichever way the centre falls.
1x fits when
- Neither line has paired and neither is one card away from anything.
- Your best result depends entirely on the centre card landing on one specific rank or suit.
- The stronger line tops out at a low pair, which pushes rather than pays.
A published rule worth knowing: if you raised 3x earlier in the hand, folding the Middle bet is not the correct play. A 3x raise means the holding was strong enough to commit extra units, and a hand that qualified for that treatment has not become worth abandoning. There are, however, six-card spots after two 1x raises that genuinely should be folded, where both lines are dead and the centre card cannot rescue either of them. The grading rule and the fold conditions are set out in full on the Middle bet guide.
The Middle bet is graded on the better of your two hands, so a single strong line is enough.
The same honesty applies here as to the Down bet. We have not computed a Middle-bet expected value for an unpaired high card as a starting hand, because by the time the decision arrives the hand has stopped being a starting hand: six specific cards are on the table and they, not the two you were dealt, determine the answer. What we can tell you is what to look at, and that the stronger of the two lines is the only thing being graded.
Why Pairing a Hole Card Matters
Pair either of your two cards and you hold a pair of jacks or better, which pays 1 to 1. That is the main way these hands win, and it is the reason they are playable at all.
Every hand on this page is built from the jack, queen, king and ace, so any pair you make with a hole card is automatically a high pair. Under the standard pay table a pair of jacks or better pays 1 to 1 on the Across, Down and Middle bets, and it also clears the requirement on the ante. A pair of 6s through 10s only pushes, and anything below that loses. Your two high cards mean you never make the kind of pair that pushes: you either miss, or you make the paying kind. The full ladder is on the pay tables page.
K-Q as the worked example
Say you hold . Fifty cards remain. Three of them are kings and three are queens, so six of the fifty pair one of your cards. Any one of those six, appearing anywhere in the cross, gives that line a paying hand on its own, without a straight, without a flush and without any further help.
Three kings left
Any of them pairs your king and the line pays 1 to 1.
Three queens left
Any of them pairs your queen and the line pays 1 to 1.
And in the centre, twice
The centre card belongs to the horizontal row and the vertical column at once, so a king or queen there pairs your hand in both directions in the same moment.
The centre card is the only card on the table that can pair a hole card in both directions at the same time.
That is worth watching for, because the Middle bet is graded on the stronger of the two completed hands and both lines run through the centre. A king in the top or bottom position pairs one line. A king in the centre pairs both, which means the Across hand, the Down hand and the Middle bet all improve together.
Pairing is why a small loss is still worth playing
Every hand covered here except Q-J suited runs at a small loss on the Across bet, between −0.006684 and −0.131224 per unit. Small is the operative word. These are not hands you fold, because folding forfeits the Across ante and costs a full unit, and none of them loses anywhere near that much by playing on. They are playable precisely because the pairing route keeps them close to break-even, and because pairing high always pays rather than pushing. What they are not is hands you raise.
Keep the frame right. None of this makes the game beatable. Criss Cross Poker carries a house edge of 4.33% on the ante, or 1.48% measured as element of risk, and both antes are posted before you see a card, so you cannot wait for the hands you like. The most you can have at risk in a single hand is 11 units, which is $110 at a $10 ante. The Five Card Bonus is a separate wager at a 3.53% house edge and your hole cards never touch it.
The Practical Decision
Six hands, one exception, and two decisions you make with your eyes open.
Raise 3x with Q-J suited. Bet 1x with every other unpaired jack-to-ace hand. Then let the cards you can see drive the Down and Middle choices.
- One hand crosses zero. Q-J suited returns +0.017296 per unit on the Across bet because it sits in three straights instead of one or two. No other unpaired hand in the game manages it.
- The rest are small losses, not folds. A-K, A-Q and A-J price identically at −0.030663 suited. Folding costs a full unit, so you bet the minimum and move on.
- The later bets are read, not recited. The Down and Middle decisions are made with four and six cards visible. Judge them on what is showing rather than on a number attached to your starting hand.
None of this makes Criss Cross Poker a winning game. The house edge stays at 4.33% on the ante however well you play these six hands, and both antes go in before you see a card. What good play buys you here is a smaller loss on five hands out of six, and one genuine raise on the sixth.
Play within a fixed bankroll. Decide the limit before you sit down, while the numbers are still abstract, and size the ante off that limit rather than off the table minimum. Hands like these arrive constantly and each one costs a little, so the budget matters more than any single decision. Setting a limit that holds
See the Coach Call It
Deal yourself a few unpaired high cards at the free table. The coach shows the recommended action at each of the three decisions, and it calls Q-J suited exactly the way this page does.
Criss Cross Poker is a table game from AGS, developed by Ron LaDuca and In Bet Gaming. Overall house-edge figures follow the published analysis at Wizard of Odds. The starting-hand expected values on this page were computed with this site’s own engine, across all 19,600 three-card combinations available to a line, with nothing sampled. This site is free to play, uses play money only, and accepts no wagers.