Page 7 - June 2003 • Southern California Gaming Guide

Seven-Card Stud Good Poker Training Ground by Andrew N.S. Glazer
Let’s talk a little about seven-card stud, because it’s the foundation for so many other poker games, some of which are dealt in casinos, and some of which are dealt in wild home games.
of the previous bet or raise, so if the bring-in makes it $1 to play, you can’t raise to $1.50. You would have to make it at least $2.
After the rst round of betting, the dealer gives everyone who is still in the hand another card. The betting now starts with the player showing the highest hand (not the lowest, as in the rst round), and the options for that rst player are to “check” (declining to bet, but retaining one’s right to stay in the hand if someone else later bets) or bet.
Because this second round brings the players their fourth cards, it is often called “fourth street,” and yes, the three succeeding rounds are usually called fth street, sixth street, and seventh street, although you will hear more people call the nal round “the river” instead of seventh street.
Now that we’ve scratched the surface of how the game operates, in next month’s column we’ll start looking at some of the strategic considerations that separate the winning seven-stud players from the losing players.
Andrew N.S. Glazer is the poker tournament editor for Card Player magazine, and is widely considered the world’s foremost poker tournament reporter. He writes a gambling column for the Detroit Free Press, and has authored Casino Gambling the Smart Way, which is available in bookstores or at his web site, www.casinoselfdefense.com. His new book with Phil Hellmuth is tentatively titled Practical Tournament Poker: A Guide to Learning Tournament Poker Skills Through Analyzing Actual Plays of the World’s Best Players.
If you don’t even know enough about poker to know rudimentary things like whether a ush beats a straight or a full house beats trips, I’d advise that you stay away from poker rooms until you’ve learned not only that much but much more. I love poker because it is possible to beat the game long term, but if you don’t know much about what you’re doing, you’ll lose your money faster than virtually any other game you can nd in a casino.
In seven-card stud, each player starts the hand by placing an “ante” on the table. How large the ante is depends on how big the stakes are. The dealer, who works for the house and does not participate in the game, pulls the antes towards the center of the table, and starts dealing the cards.
Why is there an ante? In all forms of poker, some money must go into the pot before the players start making decisions. In stud, this money is called an ante; in hold’em, it’s called a “blind.” The game begins as a battle for the antes. If there were no money in the pot before the betting started, why would you ever make a bet unless you were dealt
a perfect hand? You’d be risking something with nothing to gain.
By forcing players to ante, the casino gives the players something to shoot at.
The dealer then gives each player three cards, two of which are face down (your “hole cards”) and one of which is face up. The player who is dealt the lowest card must make an initial bet called a “bring-in,” and then play proceeds clockwise from that player.
On this rst round of betting, let’s say the player who makes the bring-in has bet $1.00. The next player to act can make one of three decisions. He can fold (literally turning his one face-up card over so it is face down, and sliding his cards towards the dealer), which ends his participation in this hand. Alternatively, he can “call,” which means he matches the previous bet (in this case, $1), or he can “raise,” which means he can bet an amount greater than the previous bet.
If you raise, unless you are down to your last few chips and are thus betting every single dime left in front of you, your raise must be at least twice the size
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA GAMING GUIDE
June 2003 Page 7
Column: The Poker Pundit