Seven card stud might just be the toughest poker game to master. There are many cards to track and they often disappear quickly. The game often goes slowly and that means you have to learn to remember the cards for long periods of time. It takes a sharp mind to remember each card and calculate the odds based on the cards which you have seen since the start of the hand.
This can be hard to digest. The simplest explanation is by way of example:
Imagine you have two spades face-down and two spades face-up. This leaves nine in the deck without the spades you have seen up till now from your opponents. Let us say you have seen three spades folded by the other players. In this scenario you have three more cards on the way and six more possible spades which may be dealt to make a flush. What are the chances of getting these spades? It really depends on who has folded and who is still in the game. The players who folded immediately threw out one visible card. The players still in the hand all have two visible cards. You will want to know how many cards you have not seen yet, in order to get your chances of finding one of the six spades you need.
Seven Card Stud is also a game of bluffing. Often a player with the only Ace showing face up will be able to take the pot just by betting as if he has another Ace face-down. A possible high pair early in the hand is often all it takes to rake in a pot in Seven Card Stud. In a Seven Card Stud game with an ante the player who is able to quickly take a pot with a bluff can make a nice profit since there is typically more money in these pots than in a Hold’em game.
Seven Card Stud is one of those games which needs to be learned through experience. It seems to be very straightforward with little strategy, but that isn’t the case. If you are interested in learning the game a good idea is to start at a very low limit table. Players at these tables often will call with anything and chase impossible hands so remember as you increase limits the players become tighter.
