Seven Card Stud

Before we start discussing actual Stud Strategy, we need to take a look at what kind of a choice Stud is game-selection wise. If you’re an online poker beginner, playing Stud should probably not be one of your priorities. When compared to Texas Holdem, Stud is a much less rookie friendly game. In Holdem, the luck factor is a huge equalizer. Beginners will often get the better of experienced pros on account of sheer luck alone. It takes the good players a lot of patience to hammer their edges home, and they will do it, that is the rookie will eventually lose out, but with all that, Holdem will still offer him much more satisfaction than Omaha or Stud.

In Stud, the beginner doesn’t really stand a chance against experienced opposition. If you’re a rookie, you will probably get tired of being slapped around sooner rather than later, and you’ll leave the tables never to return. As an experienced player, you’ll have a great time slapping around the beginners yourself. Depending on which category you reckon you belong to, your goals will be different when playing Stud.

Let’s take a look at some of the basic Stud strategy concepts now.
First of all, like Omaha, Stud is played in Hi only and Hi/Lo versions. The Hi/Lo version is also known as 8 or better. In order to become proficient at Hi/Lo, first you need to master the Hi only version. Hi/Lo strategy is much more complicated because unlike in Stud Hi, it is more difficult to decide who indeed has the hand that will take down the entire pot (or half of it), and there will be loads more multi-way action.
In Hi/Lo, the highest hand showed down wins the pot if there is no low qualifier. If there is a low too, then the highest and the lowest hands split the pot. In order to have a valid low you need to qualify. A Low hand contains 5 cards, none of which can be higher than 8. If you have a 9 in your low hand, it doesn’t qualify.

One of the most challenging things for beginners in Hi/Lo games is to read their low hands properly. Most rookies cannot tell if their low hand is indeed lower than that of an opponent. A simple way to properly read your low hand is to queue your cards up from highest to lowest and read the resulting string of numbers out as a single number. The lower single number is the better low hand, which means the value of your low is pretty much determined by the highest card you have in it.
If your highest card is of the same value as your opponent’s, the next card is used to determine the winner, but if you read your hand out as a number as I pointed out, you’ll always know where you are.

One of the best approaches you can adopt to Stud strategy is to play for low hands, and whenever you hit a straight a flush or another strong high hand, you can take that as a nice bonus for the scoop.