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A Hold'em Players Guide to Stud -
For some reason you have decided to make the jump from Texas Hold’em to other forms of poker, and you have thought about giving Stud a try. Before you just go and sit down at a Stud table there are some basic things that even the most advanced Hold’em player should learn before he goes and makes a fool of himself. Basic Structure: Stud games vary more than any from Hold’em games. There are no community cards, just the 7 cards in front of you. Every stud hand begins with an ante from every player, no free cards here. Every player is then dealt two cards face down and one face up. The player showing the lowest value card is forced to bet the “bring-in” which is a small bet that is usually about half the size of the lower limit. Once the bring-in has been bet the other players can either call the bring or “complete” the bring-in by raising to the lower limit (If you have no idea how limits work, please see the “Limits” section below). The forth card is dealt face up (this is also known as 4th street).Betting during this round is done at the lower limit--unless there is pair showing, and then betting can proceed at the higher limit. The fifth card is dealt face up and is also known as 5th street. On 5th street the betting is moved to the upper limit and betting continues. The sixth card is dealt face up and betting is done at the upper limit. The seventh card is dealt face down and betting continues at the upper limit and the best 5-card hand wins. One of the things that makes Stud unique from Hold’em is that the person who leads the betting during each round can change. In Stud after the first round of betting, the person who leads the betting is the person with the best hand showing on the board. For example Player A is showing AA on 4th street and Player B is showing AK, Player A would start the betting for the round, but if on 5th street Player A shows AAJ and Player B shows AAK, Player B would lead the betting on 5th street. Sorry to all those who like to raise from the button, because in Stud being the dealer and having position just really don’t matter that much. Limits: The average No-Limit Texas Hold’em Specialist’s two favorite words are “All in.” However, if you have decided to play Stud, you won’t be saying these words unless you are about to be felted. If you see a $10-$20 stud game, this has nothing to do with the size of the blinds because there are no blinds in stud. Limits place a limit *gasp* on what you can bet during a particular round of the hand. Through 4th street a player can only bet the lower limit, from 5th street on you can bet the higher limit. Limits are also limited on how many raises a person can make. In a limit game the bet is limited to a total of 3 re-raises which must be done at the limit. Information on the Table: Maybe the largest difference between Hold’em and Stud is the huge amount of information that is available in Stud. If you are learning to play Stud, don’t even bother trying to read the other people; this is last thing you need. When you are playing a full Stud game you are liable to see half of the deck face up--instead of the five face-up cards in Hold’em. Also in Stud the amount of information that is available to you changes as people fold. This is the part of Stud that most Hold’em players really get tripped up on, because in Hold’em the amount of cards you can see never changes. If you are in a hand and someone holds on 4th street, there is no change in the amount of cards that you can see. In Stud however, if someone folds on 4th street, you can no longer see the cards they have folded. Being able to remember the cards that have been folded in Stud is critical to playing Stud well. For example: You have 4 to the straight needing a 10 or 5 to fill up, and you have 2 more cards to try and fill your straight. The average Hold’em player would look at this and think “I am open-ended” and would continue to chase their straight, but they forgot that when the hand began two of the fives were folded and so was one of the tens. You have gone from 8 outs to five and completely missed it. Then the player starts to pay attention to the boards of the other players and starts to realize that there is a five and ten already out so the player is down from five outs to three. Reading the boards of other players is the other vital element to playing Stud. If you are in the middle of a hand of Stud on 6th street with 5 players remaining there is a grand total of 20 cards that are face up. This is where the majority of decision making takes place, especially when you are drawing. If you are on a heart draw, and you can see that among the 20 cards that are face up there are 5 hearts already out there, you are not going to want to draw to those hearts. This is also important in determining the strength of your opponent. If it is obvious that your opponent is drawing to the straight, but you can see the majority of the cards that he needs to fill his straight, you can go ahead and draw against it. Bluffing: HA! Don’t even bother. There is no coming over the top for your entire stack in Stud. There is no all-in push. You can just raise again, and after the pot gets big enough, a $20 bet into a $200 pot just isn’t scary. Unless you have the taken the time to get very good at stud, bluffing really isn’t a play, because if you’re opponent is re-raising you, he’s most likely not bluffing because he sees your board and he thinks he has you beat. If you are Hold’em player that likes to play with any two cards, you might just be in trouble. Getting Started: After reading this article if you are still convinced that you want to give Stud a go, here are a few tips for you. First: Be prepared to have your head kicked in, the crap kicked out of you, to be beat like a drum, please choose your favorite analogy for loosing and be prepared for that. Odds are you’re not going to have a winning session your first time out of the gate especially if this is your first time playing a game besides Hold’em. As you embark on your journey through Stud you should realize that you need to move down a couple of levels. Try to not let your ego get in the way and make you lose even more money. Before you go out, I would recommend dusting off your poker bible (super system) and read the Stud section written by Chip Reese. Chip gives a good intro to the game and how it needs to be played. I would also recommend playing games that help your memory, such as spades (You might be too young to know this game so ask your parents), and keep telling yourself “I can not push all-in; I can not push all in.” -Jacob Ingalls
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