7 Card Stud

7 Card Stud (or alternatively: Seven Card Stud)

Before Texas Hold’em Poker became the ruling poker variant of the whole poker world, 7 Card Stud actually was the most popular poker game. The major difference between Texas Hold’em and 7 Card Stud is probably the fact, that there are no community cards in 7 Card Stud. In 7 Card Stud however, every player is dealt 7 cards – some of which face up, others face down. Since there are no blinds in 7 Card Stud, every player has to pay an obligatory amount of money, the so-called ‘ante’ in order to make sure that there is money in the pot. Altogether there are five betting rounds in 7 Card Stud.
Usually up to 8 players can take part in a game of 7 Card Stud (in some poker rooms 9 players) and most of the time the game is played with fixed 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.

3rd Street

After every player has paid his ante, each player (beginning with the one to the left of the dealer) is dealt three cards, the first two face down and the third one face up.

The first betting round

Now the player with the lowest-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.

4th Street

At the fourth street every player is dealt another card face up. Now the player with the highest-ranking upcard has to start betting, should that player or more players have an open pair, the highest limit may already be bet here.

5th Street

Each player is dealt another card face up and again the player with the highest-ranking open hand has to start betting.

6th Street

Again each player is dealt another card face up and the player with the highest-ranking open hand has to start betting.

7th Street or River

At the 7th Street all players are dealt their last card – this time face down. In this case, the same player as in the precedent round has to start betting.

‘Common Card(s)’

Since up to 8 or 9 people can take part in a game of 7 Card Stud and since there are only 52 cards in a poker deck sometimes there are not enough cards for every player to be dealt his last card. In this case the last card – the river – is dealt as a so-called common card, i.e. it is put face up in the centre of the table. Now this card counts as the seventh and last card for every player. In this case, too, the player whose turn it was to bet first in the precedent round has to start betting again. (In very rare cases, when there are 9 players in the game, it may be necessary to deal the sixth card as a common card, too.)

Showdown

The winning player is the one who has the best hand made up of five out of his seven cards. The player who bet last has to show 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.
At the beginning online poker tabes can be really fast and tough and we thus recommend you to use some kind of external player aid or EPA - we have actually tested and summarized the best EPAs and poker strategy programs for you!

Short history of 7 Card Stud

Compared to Texas Hold’em Poker, 7 Card Stud is definitely the older poker variant, in fact it dates back to the American Civil War. At that time (mid 19th century) poker was becoming ever more popular in general and ever more poker variants were created, as was 7 Card Stud. Until the incredible rise of Texas Hold’em during the 1970s, 7 Card Stud was by far the most popular game in casinos worldwide.

Who plays 7 Card Stud?

Among professional poker players, it is said that the best 7 Card Stud player ever, was David ‘Chip’ Reese, who died in December 2007. If you want to know more about him, simply see our exclusive player profile.