Red Dog (In-Between)
The historic in-between game: one bet, two cards face up. Consecutive ranks push; a pair deals a third card free, 11:1 if it lands trips. Otherwise the spread is announced, you may double the bet, and the third card must fall strictly between. Every figure on this table is an exact count over the live shoe.
Two cards up, one card in between
- 7+the raise line
- exactodds
- 11:1trips
Manual
- One bet, two cards up.
- The stake goes down once; two cards are dealt face up. What happens next depends only on their ranks — aces are always high, suits never matter.
- Consecutive ranks push.
- Two ranks in a row leave no room for a third card: the hand is an automatic push, with no decision to make.
- A pair deals a third card free.
- A third card of the same rank pays 11:1; anything else pushes. Nothing extra is ever risked on this branch.
- A spread invites the raise.
- With a gap between the ranks, the spread is announced and you may double the bet. Spread 1 pays 5:1, spread 2 pays 4:1, spread 3 pays 2:1, four or more pay even money.
- Strictly between or nothing.
- The third card wins only when its rank falls strictly inside the window — matching either end loses.
The game
Red Dog is the casino form of the old in-between game: one bet, two cards dealt face up, and a third card that either falls between their ranks or does not. Aces are always high and suits never matter — the whole hand is three ranks.
Consecutive ranks push at once, with no third card and no decision. A pair deals the third card free: a third of the same rank pays 11:1, anything else pushes, and nothing extra is ever at risk. Every other hand announces its spread — the count of ranks strictly between the two — and offers the one decision in the game: raise up to the original bet (on this table, exactly double) or call as is. The third card then wins by the ladder if it falls strictly inside, and loses otherwise, ends included.
The spread ladder
The thinner the window, the better the price — and the price is never good enough on the thin ones.
| Spread 1 | 5:1 |
| Spread 2 | 4:1 |
| Spread 3 | 2:1 |
| Spread 4–11 | 1:1 |
| Pair — trips on the free card | 11:1 |
| Consecutive ranks | push |
The numbers
With two cards showing, the third card is a single hypergeometric draw, so everything on this table is an exact count over the remaining shoe — nothing sampled, no ±. The decision rule is one sentence: raise when the spread is 7 or more, call below, in any number of decks. At spread 7 the window holds 28 of the 50 unseen cards of a single deck — 56%, the first spread past even.
The house edge, raising every 7+, by deck count: 1 deck 3.155%, 2 decks 3.077%, 4 decks 2.884%, 6 decks 2.798%, 8 decks 2.751%. More decks lower the edge — the opposite of blackjack, and the best fact this table owns. The reason: removing the two up cards from a small shoe thins exactly the ranks that would beat you least, so a bigger shoe keeps more winners in the windows and more pairs on the way to trips.
Tactics
The only skill in Red Dog is the raise line. Hold to seven: every raise below spread 7 is doubling a losing bet, whatever the ladder promises — spread 1 pays 5:1 and still gives up 52% of the stake per call at one deck.
The pair branch is free money variance: the third card costs nothing, pays 11:1 when it hits, and asks nothing of you. Nothing you do changes it, so let it happen and grade yourself only on the spreads.