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Seven-Card Stud, Razz and Stud Hi-Lo

Seven-Card Stud is a poker game with no community cards: each player is dealt seven cards, three face down and four face up, and makes the best five-card hand. Razz is stud played for the lowest hand, and Stud Hi-Lo (Eight or Better) splits the pot between the best high and the best qualifying low.

How it works

Everyone antes. You get two cards face down and one up (your door card), and the player with the lowest door card in stud games (the highest in Razz) pays a small forced bet called the bring-in. Then you get cards face up on fourth, fifth and sixth street and a last card face down on seventh, with a betting round after each. From fourth street on, the player whose face-up cards make the best hand acts first (in Razz, the best low), so the cards you can see matter a lot. Stud is usually played fixed-limit: bets are the small size on the first two rounds and double after that.

Rules and hand rankings

• Seven-Card Stud (high): normal poker rankings, best five of your seven cards.
• Razz: lowest hand wins. Aces are low, straights and flushes do not count against you, so A-2-3-4-5 is the best hand. Pairs are bad. There is no low qualifier.
• Stud 8/b (Eight or Better): the pot splits between the best high and the best low. A low must be five different ranks, all 8 or lower, with aces low and straights and flushes ignored. If no low qualifies, the high wins it all. You can use different cards for each half.
• Stud Hi/Lo Regular (as Phenom names it): the same split, but with no low qualifier, so there is always a low half, even if the best low is a jack-low or worse.
• Rooms may list other variants such as 2-7 Razz. Phenom runs 2-7 Razz and Razz Fusion events but does not define them on its rules pages, so read the lobby rules.

Strategy tips

1. Watch the upcards. Count which cards of your hand's key ranks are already dead (folded or showing) before you chase a draw.
2. Start with strong, live starting hands. In Razz, three low cards (ideally an ace and a deuce) are worth playing. In stud, three of a kind or a high pair with live cards (not already folded or showing) is strong.
3. In Razz, be careful with sixth street, because that is where draws turn into decisions.
4. In Stud Hi-Lo, you generally want hands with both high and low potential. Three to a low with no straight help is often weaker than it looks.
5. Bluff selectively. In stud, many players play very "true to their board", so a well-timed bet representing what you show can work.
6. Know who acts first on each street. It changes from street to street, unlike a fixed button.

Common mistakes

• Calling too much in Razz because your hand "might get there"
• Not counting dead cards
• Treating Stud Hi-Lo as high-only or low-only
• Forgetting the bring-in is the lowest card in stud but the highest in Razz

Learn more (free)

Independent free articles and rules pages, not our content. We link them because they teach the game well. Each link was checked on 2026-10-24.

• Razz poker: how to play (PokerNews) ↗
• Seven-Card Stud 8-or-Better rules (PokerNews) ↗
• Starting hands and dead cards in Razz (PokerNews strategy) ↗
• Michael Mizrachi's mixed game tips, Part 1: Stud and Stud Hi-Lo (PokerNews) ↗
• Razz (Wikipedia) ↗

Find these tournaments

Draw and stud tournaments → Stud and Razz at Phenom Poker → Stud and Razz at Clubs Poker → Stud H/L at ACR → Mixed games →

Verified in our data on Oct 24, 2026: Stud, Stud 8/b, Razz and 2-7 Razz at Phenom Poker; Razz, Triple Stud and Stud H/L at Clubs Poker; Stud H/L at ACR; and Razz and 7 Stud mystery bounties at BetOnline. Source: each site's published schedule.

FAQ

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