The Deal

The dealer deals everyone three cards, two face down and one face up.

(X = face-down card, C = clubs, D = diamonds, H = hearts, S = spades)

• Randy: X, X, king S
• Dan: X, X, 6 H
• Beth: X, X, 8 D
• Tom: X, X, 3 H
• Keith: X, X, ace S
• Linda: X, X, king H
• Tracey: X, X, 5 D

After the deal, Tom starts the betting because his 3 is the lowest face-up card. Tom bets one dollar. The betting now continues in a clockwise motion. Keith now has a choice to call, raise, or fold. He decides to call (match Tom’s bet and stay in the hand), so he bets $1. Next is Linda, who decides to raise the bet, putting in $2. (Two dollars is the table maximum until there’s a pair showing.) Then Randy must call (bet $2), raise, or fold. Randy doesn’t like his hand, so he folds and is out of the rest of this hand. He puts his cards face down, to hide them from the other players. He doesn’t lose any money on this hand because he didn’t bet anything. Next is Dan, who decides to raise the bet. He puts in $4: $2 to match Linda plus another $2, which is his raise. Keep in mind he can only raise $2-no more, no less. The last of our seven players, Beth, decides to fold, so she’s out of the hand but doesn’t lose any money.

Now we’re back to Tom, who started the betting at $1. If Tom wants to remain in the hand, then he must call Dan’s raise, by adding $3 to the pot. Tom figures that his hand may be worth the minimum bet of $1, but it’s not worth $4, so he decides to fold and is out of the hand, losing his $1. Now Keith, who called Tom’s $1, needs to bet $3 in order to call and stay in the hand, which he does. Linda bet $2 last time, so she’ll need to bet $2 to call or she can fold. Linda calls and bets $2. It’s the same for Tracey: to remain in the hand, she must call by betting $2. When she puts in her $2, the first round of betting is finished because we’re back to Dan and everyone has called his $4 bet: the four remaining players-Keith, Linda, Tracey, and Dan-each have $4 invested in the hand.

The dealer gives the four remaining players one card each. Their hands now look like the following:

• Keith: X, X, ace S, 4 S
• Linda: X, X, king H, 6 C
• Tracey: X, X, 5 D, 10 D
• Dan: X, X, 6 H, 2 D

Second Betting Round

The betting in round two begins with Keith, because his face-up cards give him the best hand at this stage. (Note: straights and flushes must consist of five cards, so even though Keith has two spades up and Tracey has two diamonds up, which means both could be on their way to a straight, it’s just two cards at this point-an ace and a 4 for Keith and a 5 and a 10 for Tracey.) Since no player has a pair showing, the highest card face up is Keith’s ace.

Keith decides to bet $2, the table maximum when no one hand has a pair showing. Next Linda decides to call and bets $2. Tracey raises, betting $4 ($2 for Keith’s bet and $2 for the raise). The other players can’t tell from her raise if Tracey has just a good hand or a great hand, because any raise in this round must be $2-no more and no less. Next comes Dan, who needs to bet $4 to call and remain in the hand. Dan decides to fold and turns over his cards face down, losing the $4 he bet in round one. Now it’s back to Keith, who must call with $2, fold, or raise. Keith decides to call and bets $2. Back to Linda, who faces the same decision as Keith. She too decides to call, adding $2 to the pot. This ends the second betting round.

The players remaining in the hand-Keith, Linda, and Tracey-each receive another card face up. The hands are then as follows:

• Keith: X, X, ace S, 4 S, 3 S
• Linda: X, X, king H, 6 C, king D
• Tracey: X, X, 5 D, 10 D, ace C

Third Betting Round

Now the third round of betting begins. Linda has the highest hand showing, with a pair of kings, so she begins this round. She can either check (bet nothing but remain in the hand) or bet $2 or $4. (The higher increment is possible, now that a pair is showing.)

Linda decides to check. Next comes Tracey. She thinks both Keith with his three spades and Linda with her pair of kings have potentially better hands than she does, so she also checks. Next is Keith. Keith may now bet or check. Keith decides to check. This ends this round of betting. No additional money was bet this round and no players were eliminated.

Now the three players receive another card face up. This is the last card they’ll get face up. After this round of betting, they will get one more card face down. The hands look like the following:

• Keith: X, X, ace S, 4 S, 3 S, 2 S
• Linda: X, X, king H, 6 C, king D, 9 D
• Tracey: X, X, 5 D, 10 D, ace C, ace H

Tracey has the highest hand showing, with a pair of aces, so she begins the betting. She can bet ($2 or $4), check, or fold. (It’s never smart to fold when you can check, because it doesn’t cost anything to check and you can always fold on your next turn to bet.) Tracey thinks her hand is good enough to beat Keith and Linda, so she bets $4. Next is Keith. The cards showing give him a chance at a flush, even a straight flush (since the ace can be counted as the low end of a 5-4-3-2 sequence). Keith is holding a very good hand, so he wants to raise the stakes a little, but not so much as to scare Linda and Tracey into folding. Since the goal is not just to win the hand, of course, but to win as much money as possible, it’s important to sense just how far you can push the other players without forcing them to fold. So Keith raises Tracey’s bet by $4, putting in $8 ($4 for Tracey’s bet and a $4 raise). Next is Linda.

It will cost her $8 to call, $12 to raise, and nothing but all her bets to this point to fold. She decides to call and bets $8. If she had raised, then the other two players would have had to put in an additional $4 to stay in the hand. That would have been fine for Keith, but Tracey may have only the pair of aces showing and she might have dropped out. So, Keith and Tracey can wonder about what Linda’s holding. It’s good, but how good?

The last card for each remaining player is dealt face down. Each remaining player’s hand looks like the following:

• Keith: X, X, ace S, 4 S, 3 S, 2 S, X
• Linda: X, X, king H, 6 C, king D, 9 D, X
• Tracey: X, X, 5 D, 10 D, ace C, ace H, X

Now each player has received seven cards total, three face down and four face up. Tracey is once again the first to bet, since the final card dealt is face down, so the betting order is the same as for the previous round. Tracey believes she still has the best hand and bets $4. Keith once again raises Tracey’s $4 bet, to $8. Linda didn’t get the card she needed to help her hand and she knows Tracey has her beat with just the face-up cards, so she folds and is out of the hand, at a loss of $12.

The betting returns to Tracey, who has the option of putting $4 in the pot to call, raising again, or folding and letting Keith win the pot. She decides to raise, betting $8 ($4 for Keith’s raise plus $4 for her raise). Keith then decides to raise again, and bets $8. That’s the third raise, so there’ll be no more raises. It’s back to Tracey. Now she can call and bet $4 or fold and let Keith have the pot. Tracey decides to call and bets $4. Now it’s time for the showdown.

The Showdown

Since Tracey called Keith’s last bet, Keith must put down his five-card hand first. His seven cards are the following:

• Keith: 7 S (X), jack C (X), ace S, 4 S, 3 S, 2 S, 10 H (X)

The best five-card poker hand Keith can make out of his seven cards is a flush-ace S, 7 S, 4 S, 3 S, and 2 S. Keith was one card (5 S) away from a straight flush, because he would have used the ace to complete the straight to the five (ace, two, three, four, and five).

Tracey must now beat a flush in order to win the pot. Her hand looks like the following:

• Tracey: 7 D (X), 5 H (X), 5 D, 10 D, ace C, ace H, and jack S (X)

The best hand Tracey can make out of her cards is two pair, aces and fives. A flush is higher than two pair, so Tracey tells Keith he wins the pot and Tracey turns over her cards face down. Tracey lost $28 on that hand. The amount in the pot was $73. The casino rakes its share-$3, the maximum, since 10 percent would be greater than the maximum. Keith wins a total of $70, but since he put $28 in bets into the pot, his profit is $42.

That’s an example of how a hand of seven-card stud is played. There’s a little bit of luck, skill, and psychology in seven-card stud, so you have to become proficient at reading people and their hand potential in order to be a good seven-card stud player.