Seven Card Stud Poker Rules

Seven Card Stud poker held a great deal of popularity until the rise of Texas Hold’em, particularly on the casino and online poker room scenes. Stud poker is an entirely different game compared with Texas Hold’em. The only common ground is seen in hand ranking structure, which similar to most other most poker types. Seven-card stud poker is played high only or hi/low split. This basically means the objective is to create the highest possible card in the first case or both the highest and lowest possible hands in the second case.

Some games choose a dealer by dealing single cards face-up around a table and starting the dealer position with the first player to get an ace. Game play starts with each player posting an ante with the amount set by the dealer. Then each is dealt two face-down cards (hole cards) and one face-up. The lowest face-up card is then recognized by the dealer and that player opens the hand with either a bet or a check. This is called the “bring in” bet. It is usually quite low. If there is a tie for the lowest up card, suits are used in alphabetical order to determine the lowest (ie. clubs, diamonds, hearts, then spades would be lowest to highest).

Once the player makes a bet, betting continues clockwise around the table. Others have the common options to call, raise or fold. There is a maximum of 4 bets (1 bet and 3 raises) in each round.

Remaining players are then dealt a fourth, face-up card. This is called “Fourth Street.” Another betting round starts, but this time by the player with the strongest poker hand showing. This may seem similar to Texas Hold’em in process, but the greatest difference is that each player has their own cards, with no community cards.

Fifth and Sixth Street follow as the next rounds and proceed in the same manner until each player has 6 cards. In each case, the dealer recognizes the highest hand and that player begins the betting round. The final round of Seven Card Stud, Seventh Street (or the River) sees the last card dealt face down and now there is another betting round, again started by the remaining player with the highest hand. As a finale, all players reveal their hands and the highest hand wins the pot.

If you liked the Seven Card Stud Rules, read about other poker rules here.