Away from the Bosom of Hold ‘Em

Posted by Verstehen

July 4, 2008

Like most online cash game players, 99 percent of my time is devoted to Hold ‘Em. I stopped playing limit hold ‘em last year, and I now pretty much exclusively play $0.50/1 and $1/2 NL cash. It’s a nice situation: there are many many games to choose from, usually with at least one fish per table. Still, it can wear thin like every routine.

Lately I’ve been sick of all hold ‘em, all the time. Instead, I’ve playing one of my favorite games, but an absolute dinosaur in the poker world: 7-card stud High. Even with interest in H.O.R.S.E. growing, Stud High is definitely a poor relative in the poker world. I just logged onto PokerStars, and there were 335 people playing Stud High cash, out of >116,000 players logged in. That’s right, about 0.3% of people are playing Stud High cash games. That includes every level from 2c/4c to $30/60.

I really hope less popular limit games like Stud High don’t die. Seven-card stud is not only a classic game – it was the most popular game before hold ‘em took over – but it’s quite difficult and arguably more complex than Hold ‘Em, because:

Position changes on every street (no button)
3rd street (first betting round) play depends on up-cards other players fold
Betting rules change on 4th street when any pair is showing on the board
Hand reading involves several different boards simultaneously since there are not community cards … just to name a few differences

One corollary is that multi-tabling Stud is pretty much impossible, because you need to see the up-cards that people folded before it’s your action. I don’t imagine that anyone can effectively 6-table Stud High (unless they had a REALLY large monitor, and even then it would be difficult to keep track). In Hold ‘Em, it’s enough to know that you’re in the cutoff with 97s and it’s folded to you; in Stud, having a decent suited one-gapper in the hole is no good if the first few players folded cards of your suit.

One other aspect that I believe holds back Stud’s popularity is that shorthanded play really isn’t much better than full-handed. The original 2+2 book on Stud High points out that unlike Hold ‘Em, shorthanded Stud games actually lead to tighter play, because the size of the 3rd street pot is proportional to the number of players. If you’re playing $1/2 Stud and shrink from 8-handed down to 5, there’s 5/8th as much money in antes. Compare this to Hold ‘Em where there are always 1.5 big blinds in the pot when the cards are dealt. The situation can be a little different with straddles or 2/5 blind structures but the amount of money is constant regardless of the number of players – even heads-up the amount of money in the pot is the same before the cards come out. In stud, each player at the table makes the pot bigger to start.

The upside is that Stud High games are pretty good. Players make some pretty bad mistakes on early streets, like calling the bring-in and a raise with 764 offsuit. It hurts when they catch, of course, but the average 1/2 stud player is probably a lot worse than the median 1/2 hold ‘em player.

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