Thoughts You’ve Thought About

Such A Studly Game

The poker boom of the past six years has brought legions of people from every corner of the globe together to the green felt pitching both playing cards and astronomical sums of money at one another.

The majority of the craze has been centered around No Limit Hold’em, also known as The Cadillac of Poker.   In no Limit Hold’em, players can wager all of their chips at any point in a hand, creating an abundance of rags-to-riches stories that keeps the influx of new players to the game constant.

On the other hand, the structure of No Limit Hold’em also allows for you to go broke the first hand of a tournament.

Understandably, good Hold’em players believe that No Limit fits their strengths, as they can set themselves up to take all of an opponent’s chips in one fell swoop. No Limit is a game where you can maximize value on every hand and become chipleader at any time.  This enticing feature of the game is hard to resist.  In fact, it can be intoxicating.

Once again, there is a down side.  There is no better feeling than getting dealt pocket aces and subsequently seeing your arch nemesis at the table shove his whole stack  of multicolored chips at you.  The correct play here is to ALWAYS call, no matter what it costs, as you have the pre-flop nuts. 

As  a poker player, you know there is no worse  feeling than that which brews inside of you when your opponent, with Ace-King, hits two kings on the flop and has you drawing to one card for the win. This kind of hand is especially infuriating knowing that you could have gotten away from your hand on the flop if you hadnt invested everything you had, mathematically correctly, preflop.

As with many drunken nights, your day of cards ends on a sour note, where you’re not quite exactly sure what happened or what you did wrong.

However, if you can  stumble out of  your drunken No Limit stupor, there’s another game out there in which consistency wins (Imagine that!) and good players are rewarded on a regular basis (No way!).

Welcome to the wonderful world of Stud.

Look it up.  Check out the rules courtesy of Pokerstars.

Now that you have an idea how to play, listen up.

Stud is played in both High and High/Low formats.  In Stud High, each player is dealt seven cards;  two down, four up, and a  stealthy seventh card face down to finish it out.  Each player has their own seven cards by the end, using five to make their best possible hand (which is ranked the same as Hold’em).

In Stud High/Low, reaching a high hand is no different. There will always be a high hand. In High/Low, however, players are also vying for the best low hand to claim half of the pot.  For example: A,2,3,4,5 is the best low hand possible, suited or not.  But, if that same hand is suited…you have both the straight flush and the nut low.   Bar any higher straight flushes in the hands of your opponents, you will be sticking a flag of whatever nationality you are into the pile of chips in the pot and claiming full rights to them.  Taking both the High and Low pots like this is known in the poker world as a “scoop.”

A “scoop” is a rare and incredibly valuable gem in Stud High/Low.  Most hands are chopped, so you only make money with half the pot if there are more than two people involved in the hand.  Some of the best examples of hands that you might scoop with are 2,3,4,5,6 or 3,4,5,6,7 as you have both a straight for the high and a powerful low hand to boot.

Both versions of Stud are traditionally played in a fixed limit format, where there is a maximum amount you can wager each betting round, which is constant through the first four cards and doubles from fifth street on.  Strategy-wise, the idea is to draw to a hand until fifth street and then figure out where you stand by the time the price to continue doubles.

The thing about Stud is that it’s very, very hard to commit all of your chips to any hand until at least six or seven levels have passed! Accumulating small and medium sized pots is the name of the game in Stud. Consistently building pots when you’re ahead and ditching hands early when you’re behind allows you to slowly build your stack up without ever being involved in a monster pot.

Yes, monster pots are nice. 

However, monster stacks are best. 

Getting from the starting line to being a serious contender for the money is the goal in a tournament. Being able to get to this point without ever having invested more than 40% of your stack is such a huge advantage for good players.  How many times have you seen the worst player at a No Limit Hold’em tournament run the game because they got their money in really bad and sucked out for a table-shattering pot? My guess is a TON.

This phenomenon doesnt happen in a Stud game, as you have to put your money in little by little, partially knowing where you stand in the hand at all times.  For example, in No Limit Hold’em someone can believe that their pocket nines are good preflop and reraise their opponent all-in. After all, he has no idea what the other person is holding, and can at least represent a huge hand and induce some big folds.

Take that hand to Stud High, where Player 1 is dealt 8,9,9. Player 1 is first to act, so he leads out the betting.  When Player 2 re-raises Player 1 with two unknown hole cards and an ace showing, Player 1 can already assume he’s beat.  As you can see, Player 1 has no bluffing power here, and his only option to win the pot is to give his opponent chips little by little in hopes of catching a nine or two pair (if that’s even good).

As you can see, as Stud hands progress you gain valuable information on the other person’s hand, letting you evaluate where your own cards stand without ever having to risk your whole tournament life on an inkling.

There is no big-bluff-turned-suckout option for bad players in Stud. If they are coming into a hand from behind, they’re going to knowingly be behind the whole time, draining chips little by little to the bettor. This is why consistency wins out more in Stud than it does in Hold’em. 

Another beautiful element of Stud is that there are certain points in hands where you know that you can’t lose.  If you have A,2,3,4,5 with four diamonds and nobody is showing three cards 5-or-lower, you KNOW that half of the pot is yours, and you’re freerolling for the 2nd half of the pot with the flush draw.  There is never this absolute certaintly in No Limit Hold’em other than when you have the actual nuts. What is the nuts in Stud (especially High/Low) is always changing, and is always dependent on the cards your opponents are holding. If you have a flush on 6th street and nobody else around is showing three cards of one suit or a pair, you MUST currently have the best hand.  Every time.  In Stud, your hand can be judged based on the combination of your cards and your opponents’, and you don’t have to have the stone cold nuts to know you have the best hand.

Stud is a game of inches and players have to work for every pot, re-evaluating their holdings at each of the seven stages of every hand. Good players evaluate the strength of their hand correctly more often than average players and average players correctly judge their holdings more often than bad players.  Therefore, as Stud tournaments progress, the bad players are generally weeded out and the good players end up at the final table, as they have played their marginal hands better throughout the tournament.

Picture a chess match. No Limit Hold’em is like a chess match, complete with all of the pieces. You have your pawns (small bets) , rooks (check-raises) and bishops (semi-bluffs).  Oh…and don’t forget the queen (all-in).  Of course, the king represents your tournament life.

Stud, on the other hand, is like a chess match where every piece is a pawn. You have no big moves to pull;  every piece (bet) is equal. It is the player who better utilizes the pawns (or chips) in front of him to whittle down at the opponent’s arsenal that rises to the top.  There is no three-move checkmate in Stud and you have to work your opponent into oblivion little by little, cutting your losses when you’re behind and maximizing profit when you’re ahead.

If anything, I hope this article hopes you see why both Stud High and High/Low are battles of wit and intelligence, compared to the hyper-aggressive shove-fest that many No Limit Hold’em tournaments turn into.

I spoke with Full Tilt Pro Alan Boston in January and he put it best when he simply said, “Bad players can’t win at Stud.” 

That blunt statement meant a lot to me, as I realized that bad Stud players give up inches all day without the chance to regain a foot like Hold’em players can in any one hand.

You can play like a genius and win the small pots all day in a No Limit Hold’em tournament, yet be eliminated in one hand gone wrong.  If you play like a genius and win all the small pots in a Stud tourney, it’s going to take a series of losing hands to be eliminated. As a poker player, I feel a lot more confident with my ability to not lose a series of hands than I do with my ability to not lose one hand.

As we all know, in No Limit Hold’em, sometimes all it takes is one hand to spell disaster.

I like to give myself a buffer zone with my tournament life and have the best possible chance  to win a tournament, which is why I love Stud (and you should too).

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