Seven-Card Stud

Three down, four up. Read the board and bet your best five. 2–7 players.

Also known as Stud Poker.

Who To Play With

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How to play Seven-Card Stud

  1. 1No blinds and no shared board. Everyone puts in a small ante, then gets two cards face down and one face up (third street). Your face-up cards sit in front of you where everyone can see them.
  2. 2The lowest card showing must start the betting with a forced bring-in. Aces count high here, and between equal ranks the lower suit brings it in: clubs are lowest, then diamonds, hearts and spades. Betting starts with the player after the bring-in, who may fold, call the bring-in, or complete it to a full small bet.
  3. 3Then come three more face-up cards, one at a time (fourth, fifth and sixth street), and a last card face down (seventh street), with a round of betting after each. From fourth street on, whoever shows the best face-up hand acts first (ties go to the first of them after the dealer).
  4. 4This is fixed limit: every bet and raise is exactly one unit, and each betting round allows a bet and up to 3 raises. On third and fourth street the unit is the small bet; from fifth street on it's the big bet, twice as much. At the first stakes that's an ante of 4, a bring-in of 10 and bets of 20/40.
  5. 5A card is burned before each street. With seven players the deck can run short on seventh street; then a single card is dealt face up in the middle instead, and it counts as everyone's seventh card.
  6. 6At the showdown, make the best five-card hand from your seven cards. Players who fold leave their face-up cards showing, dimmed, so everyone can see which cards are gone.
  7. 7Play chips only — never real money. Everyone starts with 1000 chips; run out and you're out of the game.
  8. 8To keep games a sensible length, the stakes rise every 5 hands and the game ends after 50 hands (or as soon as one player has every chip). Most chips wins.
  9. 9If you're all in, you can only win as much from each opponent as you put in; the rest goes to side pots that the others play for.
  10. 10At a showdown everyone still in shows their hand. Equal hands split the pot.
  11. 11Hands rank, high to low: straight flush, four of a kind, full house, flush, straight, three of a kind, two pair, one pair, high card. Aces are high, but A-2-3-4-5 counts as the lowest straight.

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