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"7 Card Stud." The Glory Years!
bennydip2
Member Posts: 2,093
'Stud' ! No, not a male buckaroo, 'Stud', not a fancy aftershave either !! "'Stud Poker', to be precise, ' 7 card pot limit tournament poker ' ! The game that gave me a living from 1993 to 2004 in Luton Casino, along with some hi stakes cash games, both there and in some weird private venue's !So as i mentioned in a previous thread, what makes ' 7 card stud ' such a different game from Hold-em and Omaha.? Well apart from the obvious that those two games rely on a communal flop , turn and river card that all players use to make their hand, in 'Stud' each player is dealt their own cards , two down 4 up and the last seventh (river )card down...There is no button as such from the point of being the last to act, but yes the button moves around the table for each new deal .... and this is the main part of the game that most players miss the point of ..?However there is always a dealer dealing to the player on their left on every street from the button. ( a street is each round of betting for every card the players receive) The act of betting depends on which player is showing the highest hand from their 'up' cards an not the player immediately to the left of the dealer button ...!!Just to complicate things a little more these days, we have inherited the European style that the initial first bet is from the lowest 'up' card to bring in the betting.
This wasn't always that way, some games had the high card bring in the betting but now it's the low card which is fine, in fact it gives the game a better dimension ..So what do we need to know about start up hands and what do we need to understand about 'pot' betting with up to a maximum of eight players at a table in this very subtle game !Well to begin , your first 3 cards are dealt singly around the players 2 down and 1 up to give you a starting hand, you need to concentrate on the seven cards that each of the players receives on 3rd street , that is every players first 'up' card, it's imported to remember them all and there suites, in fact this is one of the main keys to be successful at this game watching everything that's going on , and especially remembering what cards are passed ....
Also it helps to keep looking for 'tells' from the way other players reach for their chips before its their turn to act, also look for expressions on the faces of your opponents and learn to watch for them as the game progress's.
There are 'tells' in the online version of ' 7 Card Stud' as well but this instance is a live game, 'tells' are different !.A lot of the basics that we learn in Hold-em are the same for all poker games including size of betting and the etiquette is always the same.When it comes to who's to bet = on the first round after everyone receives their third card (called 3rd street) it's the lowest numbered card to bring in the betting (must bet cant check at this stage only).. After that when the fourth card (4th street) has been dealt its the highest made hand of the two up cards to either check or bet, and so on through the 'streets' until the last seventh card is dealt to all the players that are left in the hand .. Now as we have had the four up cards dealt , we could have possibly had four different players who could have been asked to open the betting from 3rd to 6th street, because maybe the leading hands could changed on every 'street' of the deal,.After the seventh card it will still be up to the best hand showing from the 6 th street betting who is still to act first ...
That all said , it's likely that only two or three players are left in the hand by the seventh card on the deal.. Also remember there will be 'five' betting rounds including after the river , where as in Hold-em and Omaha there are only four !!What makes good starting hands for ' 7 card Stud ?"In tournament play with stud , you need in the early stages to be looking for 3 high cards suited or any pair with a high 'kicker,' any 'set' would be wonderful, with these starting cards you can build your hand as the bets go through the 'streets' .. The last thing you want to be doing is calling off chips to hit straights as the bets progress after fourth 'street', doing that and your in a world of danger in this game ..One thing that seldom gets talked about is the importance of 'chip management' !!As tournaments move on through the different levels and in most cases with 'Stud' , the ant-ies start to kick in, so it's important not to gamble or bluff , trap checking is good in some scenarios , wait for the starter hands and bet them accordingly, but more importantly concentrate on slowly building a chip stack , because in the later stages, you will be one of the dominating players when the big pushes start to happen ..I consider myself very lucky to have had a one of the best ' 7 card players I've ever known to be my mentor in "Rod Boland ", the guy was awesome at the cash tables, you could play for an hour and not know he was there, then from nowhere 'bosh !! He took down a monster pot !!There are other greats at this game and having played many tournaments and won some against, (all good mates) are the likes of, Mick McGee, Richard Ashby, Paul Alterman , Dave Colclough, along with good buddy George Kraft .....all gentlemen !!The most famous player was in the EPT Baden Austria , being sat at the same table when the main event was " 7 Card Limit Stud', with Vegas top gun, "Men The Master" ......
Those years were the pinnacle of this game in this country, today you will hardly ever see '7 Stud ' played , not since the Internet boom brought hold-em to the masses via the online card-rooms, and so to, the casino card rooms went the same way !
So there you have it, the basics of ' 7 card stud tournament .. Of course there is a lot more, but somethings you learn as you play and you build your own ways of doing things... The one thing that I never forget when playing ' 7 card stud tournament' poker is this ...."On a final table, there's only one person that can beat you ....... and that's yourself " !!!Barry (bennydip2)
This thread will also be in Bennys X Files
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Comments
Its how i got introduced to poker, playing round a mates house for coppers and a 10p bet limit to keep it sensible.
This was back when 10p could still buy you something.
Shame that stud and draw games are very hard to find now.
Good post.
Sounds a bit sad, but my mum taught me how to play. She was the most crazy player I've ever had to play.