Seven card stud online, with friends or the computer

Seven card stud, and what it is not

Seven card stud poker starts with an ante from everyone. You will also see it written 7 card stud, and some apps title it 7 card poker. You get two cards face down and one face up, then betting. Fourth, fifth and sixth street each add a card face up. The seventh comes face down. There is betting after every deal, which is the sequence on John McLeod's Pagat page. Three of your cards stay hidden and four sit on the table for everyone to read.

Wikipedia says it is also called Seven-Toed Pete or Down-the-River, that before Texas hold'em took off in the 2000s it was one of the most widely played poker variants in American home games, and that it is the S in HORSE. Hold'em and Omaha keep five cards in the middle for everyone. Here nothing is shared, so what you know about a rival is what they show you.

Other stud poker games borrow the name. High-low splits the pot between the best high hand and the best low one, Razz is seven card stud played for low only, and home games add wild cards. Pagat describes all three, and we deal none of the three. This is the high game: one pot, no wild cards, fixed bets.

One hand, street by street

Two seats, you and a friend, each on 600 play chips. Both ante 1, so the pot starts at 2. You are dealt two cards down and the 5 of diamonds up. Your friend has two down and the king of clubs up. The lowest card showing starts, and that is yours: bring in 4, or open with a full bet of 10 if you like. Your friend completes to 10. You owe 6 more and call. The pot is 22.

Fourth street. You get the 5 of hearts, your friend the 9 of spades. A pair showing beats king-nine, so you speak first and bet 10. Called, the pot is 42. On fifth street the bets double: you draw the 2 of clubs, your friend the queen of diamonds, and you bet 20 and get called. Sixth street brings the 7 of hearts and the jack of hearts, and both of you check. The seventh card arrives face down, and both check again. The pot is 82.

Showdown. Your hidden cards are the 5 of spades, the 9 of diamonds and the 7 of clubs. Add the pair of fives and the seven you have showing and you hold 5-5-5-7-7, a full house. Your friend turns over the 10 of spades, the 4 of clubs and the king of diamonds. With the king, nine, queen and jack showing, the ten makes 9-10-J-Q-K, a straight to the king. Full house beats straight, and you take the 82. Your friend could see the pair of fives and the seven all along, and could not see the third five or the second seven.

The bring-in, the order of play and the size of bets

Pagat's rules give two ways to start. The traditional one lets the highest card showing begin, with no bring-in. The other, which Pagat calls the normal rule in formal games, makes the lowest card showing post a small forced bet, and that is the one we follow. The ace counts high here, so the 2 of clubs is the lowest card there is, and equal ranks go by suit: clubs lowest, then diamonds, hearts, spades.

After a bring-in you can fold, call it, or complete it to a full small bet, and nobody may raise until someone completes. From fourth street the seat whose up cards make the best hand goes first. Pairs, two pair and three or four of a kind count for that, and a straight or flush showing does not, so three threes beat 7-7-8, which beats A-K-Q. Hands of the same kind go by their cards, and if the ranks match, the suit of the highest card settles it. Then play runs clockwise.

Pagat leaves the amounts to the people at the table, so these are ours: ante 1, bring-in 4, a small bet of 10 on third and fourth street, a big bet of 20 on fifth, sixth and seventh. A bet and three raises is the limit in a round while more than two seats are still in, and there is no cap heads-up. Every button is a fixed amount, so you can read what it costs before you press it. Fold only appears when calling costs something. Pagat also allows a big bet on fourth street when a pair shows. We skip that.

Running short: all in, and side pots

Bets come out of the chips you hold and nowhere else. If a bet costs more than you have left, you can still put in everything you do have, and you are all in. You keep your cards and every card still to come, and you stay in to the showdown without betting again. The catch is Pagat's: you cannot win more from any one seat than you put in yourself.

Say you are down to 15 chips and a friend bets 20 on fifth street. You call all in, and a second friend calls 20. The main pot holds 15 from each of you three, on top of whatever went in before, and you can win it. The extra 5 from each friend, 10 chips, is a side pot, and only those two can win it. When the hand ends the table works out every pot and pays each to the best hand among the seats whose chips reach it. A seat that folded wins none of them. Two seats running short at different points can make two side pots.

A seat left with no chip for the ante is out for the rest of the match. At a friends' table it watches the others finish. At the computer table your match ends there.

Hand ranking, and how a hand ends

At the showdown each seat still in uses its best five of its seven. You do not have to pick them, because the table does and names the hand in words. From the top, the seven card stud hand rankings run straight flush, four of a kind, full house, flush, straight, three of a kind, two pair, pair, high card. The ace is high except in A-2-3-4-5, the lowest straight, and suits never rank a hand.

Equal best hands split the pot, and an odd chip goes to the tied seat nearest the dealer's left. If every other seat folds, the last one takes the pot and shows nothing.

Seven card stud online free, on play chips

The chips are play chips, a running score for one table. Nothing is bought, won or kept, and when the match ends the chips end with it. A line under the board says so. The host sets how many hands the match runs. At the computer table you set it. The seat with the most chips after the last hand wins. Equal top stacks share the win.

No app to fetch here. Open a page, send friends a link and deal. Every table on the site is free, and an ad may turn up now and again, which we aim to keep discreet.

Against the computer, or with friends

At the computer table you sit down with one to three computer seats, your choice, remembered on that device. On third street a computer seat raises with a pair, three to a straight flush, or an ace or king showing with a queen or better in the hole, and calls with two high cards or three suited or connected ones. Later it counts its draws and takes off the cards it can see in the up cards on the table. It bets two pair or better, or a pair higher than any card showing elsewhere, and bluffs about one bet in twenty when its up cards beat all the others and nobody shows a pair.

With friends, the host opens a table for two to seven seats and sends a link for each seat. There is chat while you play, and voice if the host switches it on. A table waits 48 hours for the others, and a friends' table has no computer seats. The board shows whose turn it is, the pot, what calling costs, every seat's chips and every up card, and it names your own hand in words.

Our view: stud is the poker game you can most nearly work out. Four of every rival's seven cards end up on the table, so count what you need against what already shows. If two of the four hearts you want are sitting in other hands, that flush draw is worse than it looks. A folded seat's up cards stay on the board, greyed, for the same reason.