5 Card Stud

 

 

 

5 Card Stud (alternatively: Five Card Stud)

5 Card Stud is the oldest Stud Poker variant and has been existing since the American Civil War (mid 19th century). In this poker game, there are four rounds in which cards are dealt; in the first round each player is dealt two cards, in the following three rounds all players are only dealt one card. The very first card is dealt face down, all others face up. In 5 Card Stud, there are no community cards, this means that players can guess their opponents’ hands very well. Due to this, the last card is hardly ever dealt in a heads-up game and the showdown may not even be reached in many cases, because one of the players already leaves the game beforehand.
There can be up to 10 players in a 5 Card Stud game and usually 5 Card Stud is played with pot limit.

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The course of the game:

Ante

Before the game starts each player has to pay the ante before the first cards are dealt because since there are no blinds with this poker variant, without the ante there would be no money in the pot.

As soon as every player has paid the ante, each player (beginning with the first player to the left of the dealer) is dealt one hole card face down and another card face up.

The first betting round

Now the player with the highest-ranking upcard has to pay the so-called ‘Bring-in’ (should two players have the same lowest-ranking card, suit is used to break the tie – clubs before diamonds, hearts and spades). As soon as the bring-in is paid, each player (starting with the player to the left of the bring-in) may fold, call or raise. (In a fixed limit game – which is very rare for 5 Card Stud – the player with the lowest-ranking card would have to start betting.)

3rd Street

At the so-called 3rd street every player is dealt another card face up. Now, again, the player with the highest-ranking upcard has to start betting.

4th Street

Every player is dealt another upcard and again the player with the highest-ranking hand has to start betting.

5th Street or River

Again all players are dealt one card face up and yet again, the player with the highest-ranking open hand has to start betting.

Showdown

In case there is more than one player left in the game now, the showdown takes place after the 5th street. (As already mentioned above, a showdown in 5 Card Stud is highly unusual because players can see four out of five of their opponents’ cards, which makes it easy to see who has the better hand.) The player with the best hand wins the pot; the player who has bet last, has to reveal his hand first.

Standard poker moves

Fold

If you do not like the cards you were dealt, you have the opportunity to discard (fold) them and thus leave the current round of the game. Should you be big or small blind or should you have called someone’s bet already, you lose the money. Apart from that though, since you have folded, you cannot lose any more money during this round.

Check

If you want to keep your cards and stay in the game, you can, for example, check. This means that nobody before you has placed a bet yet and that you do not either. Now the player after you has the opportunity to check himself, or to bet. If any of the players in the round bets, you need to – as soon as it is your turn – decide whether you fold, call or raise.

Call

To call means that, in case a player before you has placed a bet, you bet the same amount as he does; you call his bet.

Bet and raise/re-raise – according to the limit

If you find you have been dealt decent cards, you can bet a certain amount of money on your hand being the winning hand. If a player before you has already placed a bet, you can raise his bet. Depending on the betting structure the amounts you can bet or by which you may raise, are fixed.

• Fixed limit: On a $ 5/$ 10 table you may bet $ 5 in the first two betting rounds and up to $ 10 in the last two. In each round players may bet once and raise three times (bet, raise, re-raise and again re-raise or ‘cap’). After three rounds of betting the so-called cap is reached, this means that in this betting round, no more betting can be done. In this case the next card is dealt – or if it was the last round – the showdown begins.

• No limit: Here the betting structure follows these rules: Each player may bet all the money he has on the table, regardless of the size of the pot. As a rule, the minimum bet has to at least equal the amount of the Big Blind and if you decide to raise, your raise does at least have to equal that of the player before you.

• Pot limit: In a pot limit game a player may bet a sum between the minimum bet and the total size of the pot. In a $ 5/$ 10 pot limit game the small blind is $ 5 and the big blind $ 10. The first player could call the big blind (i.e. $ 10 in this case) or raise to any amount up to the total pot size. The raise has to either equal or exceed the previous bet. So in this case, the maximum possible raise would be $ 25 ($ 5 small blind, $ 10 big blind and $ 10 the call) which means that player #3 may actually bet a total of $ 35. So should player #3 raise the pot limit, the total amount in the pot would then be $ 50.
  Now if the next player (let’s say player #4) wants to go on playing, he at least has to call the $ 35, i.e. the bet player #3 has made. Should player #4 want to raise (up) to the pot limit he would have to put $ 120 into the pot. That is the total pot size ($ 50) plus the maximum raise of $ 70 ($ 35 call + $ 35 raise). The number of betting rounds per hand is not limited and in each round calling and raising continues until every player has either called, or folded his cards.

All-In

Primarily, players go ‘All-In’, when they have a particularly good hand. This is because: when one or more other players call this move and the player who went all-in wins anyway, his winnings in this round increase considerably. Another possibility would be, that a player goes all-in to bluff and merely signal that he has a good hand, in order to make the other players fold and win himself the pot. (What the precise rules for an all-in situation are is described in the following paragraph.)
Apart from the situation described above, players could also go all-in for the following reason:
In case a player lacks the necessary amount of chips to call or finish a hand but has nice cards and wants to stay in the game anyway, he does not have to fold. The player can also go ‘all-in’; so he bets all of his chips (even if they are not sufficient to cover the sum he would actually need to call) and can stay in the game without being able to act any further though.
All the money that is in the pot up until the point when he goes all-in, is what the player can win. All money put into the pot after he went all-in is put in a separate pot (‘side pot’). Should the player who is all-in, win the showdown, he wins the main pot, whereas the side pot goes to the player with the second best hand.
When a player goes all-in and his fellow players decide to call his bet, they obviously have to call the sum he bet.

Learning by doing

Even after the best of explanations, you still need to practice playing at an online poker table. We have created reviews of the best online poker schools to show you where you can practice your play.
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Short history of 5 Card Stud

This poker variant was created during the American Civil War and is the oldest Stud Poker variant. Just like its relative 7 Card Stud, 5 Card Stud lost a lot of its popularity to the rise of Texas Hold’em Poker. The fact that 5 Card Stud has not been played at the WSOP in a long time, obviously harmed its popularity a great deal, too. Most casinos now prefer Texas Hold’em and 7 Card Stud to Five Card Stud.

Who plays Five Card Stud?

In 1974 Five Card Stud was last played at the WSOP and today it is mostly a popular home-game. The 5 Card Stud Champion of 1974 was Bill Boyd; the poker-pro who died in 1997 actually won a total of four WSOP-bracelets in the course of his career – all four of them in 5 Card Stud games. If you want to know more about the most famous poker players, visit our poker-pro site!