How to play seven card stud

The deal, and five rounds of betting

A seat is one place at the table, filled by a person or a computer. One standard 52-card pack, no jokers. Everyone antes 1 chip into the pot. The dealer button moves on to the next seat every hand, and the cards are dealt one at a time from the seat after the dealer. Unlike Texas hold'em there are no shared cards and no blinds: the ante and the bring-in get the pot started.

Each deal and the betting after it is called a street. Third street: two cards face down and one face up, then a round of betting. Fourth, fifth and sixth street: one card face up each, with a round of betting after each. Seventh street: one last card face down, and the final betting round.

The hidden cards, your first, second and seventh, are your hole cards. By the end you hold three hidden and four showing. Nothing is shared and nothing is swapped, so 7 card stud is a game of reading what the others show. Everyone can read your four too.

Who starts: the bring-in, then the best up cards

On third street the seat showing the lowest card starts, and posts a small forced bet, the bring-in. Ace is high, and equal ranks go by suit: clubs lowest, then diamonds, hearts, spades. The starter must bring in 4 chips or open with a full small bet of 10. There is no check and no fold on that first move.

From fourth street the order changes. The seat whose up cards make the best poker hand starts. Pairs, two pair, and three or four of a kind count, and a straight or a flush showing does not. Three threes beat 7-7-8, which beats A-K-Q. Hands of the same kind go by their cards, higher first, and if the ranks match too, the suit of the highest card settles it. After the first seat, betting runs clockwise. A seat that has folded no longer counts.

What you can do on your turn

You can fold, which drops you out of the hand, or call, which matches what has been bet. After a bring-in you can also complete it, which lifts it to a full small bet. Nobody may raise until someone has completed, and the bring-in seat then owes the rest of the difference and can fold, call or raise. With nothing bet on fourth street or later you can check, which passes without paying, or bet. Facing a bet you can fold, call or raise, and a check-raise is allowed. There is no fold button when you could check for free, because a free fold is never better than a check.

This is a fixed limit game, so every bet is one of the set amounts. Small bets are 10 on third and fourth street. Big bets are 20 on fifth, sixth and seventh. A raise is a call plus one more bet of the street, and a betting round takes a bet and three raises while more than two seats are in. Heads-up, raising is uncapped. You never type an amount: the table offers each legal bet as a button.

Running out of chips: all in, and side pots

The starting stack is 600 play chips for everyone, and you bet only what you have in front of you. If a bet costs more than your last chips, you can still put in everything you have, and you are all in. You keep your cards and every card still to come, and stay in to the showdown with no more betting from you.

An all-in seat can only win from each rival as much as it put in. Whatever the others bet beyond that goes into a side pot it cannot win, and when the hand ends each pot goes to the best hand among the seats whose chips reach it. A seat that folded wins none of them.

One more rule from Pagat, the half rule. An all-in that adds less than half a bet is not a raise: it does not count toward the cap of three raises, and seats that have already acted can only call or fold. A seat left with no chip for the ante is out for the rest of the match.

The showdown, and the hand ranking

After the final round, each seat still in makes its best five-card hand from its seven, and the table picks the five for you. Best first: straight flush, four of a kind, full house, flush, straight, three of a kind, two pair, pair, high card. A straight is five cards in sequence. A-2-3-4-5 is the lowest one, the ace is high otherwise, and suits never rank a hand. Inside a kind, higher cards win, so a pair of kings beats a pair of queens.

Equal hands split the pot, and an odd chip goes to the tied seat nearest the dealer's left. If everyone else folds, the last seat takes the pot without showing a card.

This is the high game, not hi-lo or Razz

Seven card stud has cousins, each played a different way. Hi-lo splits the pot between the highest hand and the lowest, and Razz is played for low only, so the lowest hand wins outright. Pagat describes both, and home games add wild cards. We deal none of them. Here the highest five-card hand wins the whole pot, with no wild cards.

How many players can play 7 card stud, and how a match ends

Pagat says two to eight people can take part, best with five to seven. With eight the deck can run out, and the last card is dealt face up to the middle as a shared card. We seat two to seven at a friends' table, so seven seats use 49 cards and that never comes up. At the computer table you sit against one to three computer seats. It is free to play, with no account.

A match is a set number of hands: four, eight or twelve, and eight unless the host picks another. At the computer table you choose it. The seat with the most chips after the last hand wins, and the match ends early if fewer than two seats can pay the ante. The chips are play chips: nothing is bought, won or kept, and they stay on the one table.