Stud poker has been around far longer than its popular community card counterparts. And while stud poker may not be the most popular variant at the online poker rooms, it nevertheless has a loyal following. Perhaps that’s why the world’s largest tournaments – like the WPT and the WSOP – continue to offer stud events, and why stud variants are never absent from popular mixed games like HORSE and SHOE. Knowing the stud poker rules and, by extension, being a good stud player will not only impress your poker buddies, it could prove very profitable in online poker rooms where the stud competition is notoriously soft.
The rules for stud poker will depend largely on what variant you’re playing. While Seven Card Stud is the most common stud game, Five Card Stud is frequently featured at tournaments and Razz (a low-card version of Seven Card Stud) is frequently included in mixed games, like HORSE. Still, the basic rules for stud poker are largely the same in regards to how the game is played and how it is won.
The stud poker rules have a few things in common with other popular poker variants, but the one aspect that will likely seem familiar is the five-card hand. Regardless of how many cards are dealt, the player’s objective in stud is always to have the best five-card hand. Like Texas Hold’em, players will receive their cards across several rounds of dealing which are interspersed with betting rounds. Each card is called a” street,” so that each dealing round is named after the card that is dealt (ie Fourth Street). Also similar to Hold’em, some of those cards will be hole cards (dealt face down). Unlike Texas Hold’em, there are no shared cards.
In the most popular stud variant, Seven Card Stud, each hand begins with the players receiving three cards – two face down and one face up. Then the first round of betting commences. Next, there will be three rounds each of dealing and betting wherein a single upcard is dealt each round. The seventh and final card is then dealt face down, and any players still in the game proceed to the showdown. Altogether then there are five dealing rounds and four betting rounds in a Seven Card Stud game.