How to Play Two Unpaired Middle Cards in Criss Cross Poker
Every unpaired hand with both cards between six and ten is a 1x Across bet. Not one of them folds, not one of them raises, and only two things separate them: the gap between the ranks and whether they share a suit.
- Connected
- One gap
- Two gaps
- Three gaps
- 1x Across bet
- Down bet decided after the board shows
- Middle bet decided last
The ranks themselves do not matter here. 10-9, 9-8, 8-7 and 7-6 are worth the same to six decimal places.
Why These Hands Are Only Marginal
Pairing a middle card reaches the push line, not the paying line. That single fact is what separates a six-to-ten holding from a jack-to-ace one.
Both of your hole cards play twice: once with the three horizontal community cards for the Across hand, and once with the three vertical cards for the Down hand. So the first question with any starting hand is what happens when the board simply pairs one of your cards. For two unpaired middle cards, the answer is that nothing is paid.
| Hand you finish with | Result |
|---|---|
| A pair of jacks or better | Pays 1 to 1 |
| A pair of 6s through 10s | Pushes |
| A pair of 5s or lower | Loses |
| No qualifying hand at all | Loses |
The worked example: 10-8
Say you hold a ten and an eight. The horizontal cards come down and one of them is a ten. You now hold a pair of tens in the Across hand, which is a genuine improvement over nothing at all, and it still pays you zero. A pair of 6s through 10s pushes, so the bet and the ante come back and the hand is over. Pair the eight instead and the outcome is the same. Miss both and the hand loses.
That is the whole shape of a middle holding: pairing a hole card prevents a loss rather than creating a win. To be paid, the board has to do more than pair you. It has to bring two pair, trips, a straight, a flush or better, and those arrive far less often than a single pair does.
This is exactly where jack-to-ace holdings differ
Hold a jack, queen, king or ace and the same board card that pairs you produces a qualifying high pair, which pays 1 to 1 on the line and on the ante. The board is doing identical work in both cases. The only thing that changed is which side of the pay table the result lands on, and that split is worth a great deal.
The comparison is worth reading in full, because it explains why so many hands sit close to the raise line without crossing it. Playing two unpaired high cards Where the pay table splits
None of this makes a middle hand bad enough to throw away. It makes it marginal, which is a different thing, and marginal hands are exactly where a fixed rule saves you money.
Begin With a 1x Across Bet
Every unpaired combination of six through ten is a 1x. There is no version of this hand that folds and no version that raises.
The Across decision is made before any community card is exposed, so it can be solved outright. We did that for all 169 starting hands, and the six-to-ten block comes back with a single answer: bet the minimum. 10-9 suited is a 1x. 10-6 offsuit is a 1x. So is everything between them. The line bet is not profitable, but folding costs a full unit of the Across ante, and every one of these hands loses less than that by staying in for the minimum.
| Wager | Amount |
|---|---|
| Across ante | $10 |
| Down ante | $10 |
| Across bet at 1x | $10 |
| Total committed at this point | $30 |
A figure worth correcting: it is $30, not $40
You will sometimes see the pre-community-card commitment on a $10 game quoted as $40, as though the Down bet were already in. It is not. The order of play is fixed: both antes are posted, you look at your two hole cards, you place the Across bet, and only then are the two horizontal community cards exposed. The Down bet is placed after that, with information the Across bet never had. At the moment you commit to 1x you have $30 on the felt.
That ordering is the reason this page can give an exact answer for the Across bet and not for the two that follow. The full order of play
Betting options can vary between tables, so confirm what the felt allows before you sit down. Where a 2x is offered on the Across bet, it is not a middle-card spot: the reason to take the minimum here is that the line itself is a losing wager, and a larger stake on a losing wager loses more.
Gap and Suit Are the Only Things That Matter
Two variables set the value of every six-to-ten hand: the distance between the ranks, and whether the two cards share a suit. Nothing else moves the number.
We ran every unpaired six-to-ten combination through the same exhaustive calculation and sorted the results. They collapse into four rows. Here is the expected value of the Across bet, per unit staked, for each gap and for each suit case.
| Gap | Example | Suited line EV | Offsuit line EV |
|---|---|---|---|
| Connected | 10-9, 9-8, 8-7, 7-6 | −0.224031 | −0.317347 |
| One gap | 10-8, 9-7, 8-6 | −0.248010 | −0.336939 |
| Two gaps | 10-7, 9-6 | −0.271990 | −0.356531 |
| Three gaps | 10-6 | −0.295969 | −0.376122 |
Every figure is negative, which is why none of these hands is a 3x, and every figure is small enough that staying in for 1x beats forfeiting the ante, which is why none of them is a fold. The connected suited hand at the top and the three-gap offsuit hand at the bottom are separated by about 0.15 of a unit, and the whole block sits inside that band.
The ranks themselves are irrelevant
10-9 suited, 9-8 suited, 8-7 suited and 7-6 suited are not merely similar. They are identical to six decimal places, because a middle card does nothing that another middle card cannot do: none of them makes a qualifying pair, and each of them sits in the same number of straights. Once you know the gap and whether the suits match, you know the value of the hand.
The two effects are easy to size. Sharing a suit is worth about +0.093 on the line bet, because it puts a flush in reach. Each extra gap costs about 0.024 suited and about 0.020 offsuit, because it removes a straight the two cards could otherwise appear in. Read down the table and you are watching those two numbers repeat.
The ante behaves the same way
The Across ante is priced by the same two variables. A connected suited hand returns −0.439082 per unit on the ante and a connected offsuit hand −0.455510, and each extra gap costs about 0.006 more. The ante cannot be adjusted once it is posted, but it is part of the reason these hands are worth playing on rather than folding.
How the figures were produced
One line in Criss Cross Poker is your two hole cards plus three community cards. Each starting hand on this page was evaluated against all 19,600 three-card combinations available from the remaining 50 cards, with the result graded on the Across, Down and Middle pay table. Nothing is sampled, estimated or approximated, and there is no simulation involved: every board is counted exactly once.
About the “$13.71 loss per hand” figure
A loss of $13.71 per hand circulates for these holdings. It is worth being precise about what can and cannot be stated here. We have solved the Across decision exactly, and those are the figures in the table above: they are per unit staked, they cover every possible board, and you can check them row by row.
What we do not publish is one total loss per hand, because the Down bet and the Middle bet are made after community cards are exposed, and their value changes with what those cards are. A hand that shows three cards of your suit and a hand that shows three unrelated high cards are not the same hand any more, and no single average can stand in for both. Rather than invent a number to fill the gap, we give the Across figures we computed and say plainly where the exact answer stops.
Let the Across Cards Guide the Down Bet
Once the two horizontal cards are exposed you are no longer betting blind. The Down decision should be made on what you can see.
After the 1x Across wager is placed, the two horizontal community cards turn face up. Those cards belong to the Across hand, but they also tell you which cards are gone from the deck, and with a middle holding that information matters more than usual. A hand whose value rests on straights and flushes is a hand whose value can be taken away by two cards.
- A larger Down bet is justified when the exposed cards have already built something: two pair or trips made outright, a strong straight shape around your two ranks, three or four cards of one suit with your suited holding, or several separate routes to a paying hand at once.
- 1x fits when the picture is ordinary: a live holding with the usual chances and nothing pointing either way. This is the common case, and taking the minimum keeps the cost of a marginal hand small.
- Some spots should be folded when the exposed cards remove the outs the hand depended on: your straight ranks are gone, your suit is dead, and the hand can now only reach a pair that pushes at best. There is no reason to pay to see the rest of it.
The limit of this analysis, stated plainly
We solved the Across decision exactly. It is made before any community card is exposed, so the same three-card enumeration covers every case, and the figures in section 3 are the whole answer for that bet.
The Down bet and the Middle bet are different in kind. They are made after cards have been revealed, so the correct action depends on which cards those are, and the number of distinct situations is far too large to reduce to one fixed multiplier. We are not going to publish a single recommended Down bet for six-to-ten hands, because there is not one. What this section gives you is the reasoning to apply at the table, and that is deliberately the honest limit of it.
Pairing a Card Does Not Always Mean 3x
The advice to raise the Middle bet whenever an exposed card pairs a hole card is too broad for these hands, and here is the reason.
It is a reasonable rule with high cards. Pair an ace, king, queen or jack and you hold a qualifying high pair, so the Middle bet is already looking at a paying hand before anything else happens. Carry that rule down to the middle ranks and it stops working. Pair a six, seven, eight, nine or ten and the hand you are holding pushes. A push is not a win. It returns your stake, and a bet that returns your stake gains nothing from being three times larger.
What the bare pair actually guarantees
Nothing that pays. A pair of 6s through 10s is the floor of the hand, not the target. It protects you from a loss on that line and it stops there, so a maximum Middle bet placed on the strength of the pair alone is a maximum bet on a push.
A maximum Middle bet still makes sense in plenty of these spots. What justifies it is the rest of the board, not the pair. If the other exposed cards add two pair or trips potential, a straight that runs through your ranks, or a flush that your suited holding is part of, then you are betting on a hand that can be paid, and the pair is simply the safety net underneath it.
What the decision should actually weigh
- Whether the pair is a qualifying high pair or a middle pair that only pushes.
- Whether a second pair or a third matching card is already on the board, which turns a push into two pair or trips.
- Whether the exposed cards leave a straight running through your two ranks, and how many of the cards it needs are still live.
- Whether you are suited and how many cards of that suit are showing.
- Which of your two hands the Middle bet would be graded on, since it takes the better of the two and one strong line is enough.
The Middle bet is the last decision of the hand and the one with the most information behind it, so it rewards reading the board rather than following a slogan. How the Middle bet is graded
The Practical Decision
Strip out the arithmetic and a short instruction is left.
Open every unpaired six-to-ten hand for 1x on the Across bet, then let the revealed cards drive the Down and Middle choices.
- Connected and suited hands have more ways to improve. They sit in the most straights and they can still make a flush, and that is the entire reason they price better than the gapped offsuit versions.
- Gapped offsuit hands lean on pairing. With fewer straights available and no flush in reach, most of what is left is hitting one of your two ranks.
- Pairing a middle card may only secure a push. Treat it as protection against a loss, not as a signal to raise, and take the maximum only when the rest of the board gives the hand somewhere to go.
These are the hands that decide how much a session costs, because they turn up constantly and none of them is dramatic. Playing all of them for 1x, folding the Down bet in the spots where the exposed cards have already killed the hand, and saving the maximum Middle bet for boards that can actually pay is the whole of it. It will not make the game profitable, and it is not meant to. It keeps the marginal hands cheap.
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. Marginal hands like these arrive far more often than premium ones, so the session length your bankroll buys is what really determines how the evening goes. Setting a limit that holds
Practise the Marginal Spots
Middle cards are the hands you will be dealt most often. The free table deals them with the same pay table, and the built-in coach shows the recommended action at each of the three decisions.
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.