On the Starting Line in Seven-Card Stud Eight-or-Better - Part III

This is the third and final installment in my discussion of 7-stud/8 starting hands, aimed at giving new players some direction, along with a set of standards that will make them feel comfortable in the game.

The best starting hands are two-way hands. Get lucky with them and you can scoop a big pot. This generally means starting with low hands. Low cards can swing high, but high hands don't swing low very often. If you start with a hand like 6-5-3, you're on your way to a good low, but with a bit of luck, you also might make a straight that can take the high side. Three low suited cards – especially three low suited cards with an ace – can make a low hand as well as an ace-high flush. But try starting with three high cards and see how difficult it is to go low. After all, if you were dealt Q-J-10, you've got a straight working, but how are you ever going to make a low hand? You can't. It's that simple. That doesn't mean you can't ever play high cards. You can. But, you have to consider the situation carefully.

Suppose you're high and last to act, the only callers all show low cards, and not one of them is an ace. You're probably the only player going high. While starting hands appearing to be low can sometimes be deceptive – such as 5-5-5, a hand that looks low but is really high – it's tough for a high hand to disguise itself. After all, if you call with a king showing, you either have the worst possible low hand or are going high, and it doesn't take a Mensa membership card to deduce that a player who calls with a king doorcard is trying to build a high hand. You could have a pair, a straight draw, or a flush draw. Your opponents won't know that, but they will know the direction you're headed, and that's more important.

Since you won't generally have any deception built into high hands, when can you safely play them? If all of your opponents are chasing low hands and you have a good high hand working, go ahead and play it. Unless one of your opponents makes a low straight or a flush, chances are that your high hand will hold up. If you both make two pair, yours takes the high side. If you both make a set, you'll win with ease – unless, of course, he's holding a set of aces. But hands like that are rarities, and you are getting the right price to gamble whenever you are the only player going high and are confronting two or more opponents with low draws.

You can also play for the high end when you are up against one opponent who looks like he is working on a low hand. The reason for this is obvious. If you have even so much as a high pair on third street, you are favored. After all, you have a hand. Your opponent is still drawing, and there's no guarantee he'll make a low hand. He might start off with four wheel cards and catch three bananas in a row and never complete his low hand. That's a great situation for the high hand, because it will either take the whole pot or split it, while the guy with the low draw – unless fortunate enough to make a two-way hand or back into a high hand – will split the pot or lose it all. If you are going to draw for a low hand, you'd ideally like to be up against a bunch of high hands – a guarantee that you'll take half the pot if you make a low. Unless you have way the best of it, competing with a bunch of low hands for half the pot against a lone high hand is really a gamble.

Regardless of how many opponents you are up against, it pays to go high when you start with a powerhouse hand. If you are dealt rolled-up jacks, for example, you shouldn't mind any number of opponents who also appear to be going high. You already have three of a kind, along with a strong likelihood of improving to a full house or better. In these situations, you are heavily favored, and you ought to exploit it for all it's worth by betting and raising at every opportunity in order to make it very costly for any opponent with a low draw to stick around and try to capture half the pot. This is a very different strategy from the one you'd apply in seven-card stud, where you'd probably just call until the bets double on fifth street. In 7-stud/8, you should raise with big high hands early and often in order to eliminate any marginal low hands that might otherwise want to draw against you.

The following chart summarizes the kinds of starting hands you'll want to play.

I've discussed how powerful your hand is when it contains an ace, and how an ace as your doorcard can confuse your opponents because they won't know whether you have a high or a low hand. But what happens when you see an ace as an opponent's doorcard? What should you do then?

You shouldn't play many hands when an ace raises, and hands that include a pair of kings or a pair of queens should be thrown away. Even if the player with an ace has a low draw, he can easily make a better high hand than yours as long as his aces are live. The hands you should play against an ace are three cards to a wheel, three cards to a straight flush, three cards to both a flush draw and a low draw, and three low straight cards. Even with hands like these, you still have to assess the strength of your hand against the apparent power of your opponent's hand, and release hands that don't have the potential for scooping the pot. Don't throw good money after bad if it appears your opponent with the ace is continuing to improve and your hand is stymied.

If you get a chance to play 7-stud/8 at your nearby casino or online, give it a try by keeping these starting standards firmly in mind and you should enjoy yourself. Keep it up, and it won't be long until you're beating the game with regularity.

Raise your game with Lou Krieger at http://www.royalvegaspoker.com. His newest book, Winning Omaha/8 Poker, is available through Card Player.