Seven-Card Stud and Stud Eight or Better - All you need to know about it.

Here's some Stud trivia for you. Stud was the most popular version of poker in homes and casinos across America , long before the Texas Hold 'em craze. It first appeared during the Civil War, and the original Las Vegas poker rooms were called stud houses. It's said that a group of Texan gamblers broke the Las Vegas poker mold when they introduced Texas Hold'em to Las Vegas in the early 1970s.

These two games are very different from either Texas Hold'em or Omaha. Each player is dealt his or her own hand, and if you don't like the hand you've been dealt you throw it in the pile. As a result, each player still in the hand must keep track of discarded cards so they can better estimate their chances and calculate other players' odds.

But, how do you play Seven-Card Stud and Stud Eight or Better?

Seven-card stud is a variant of the original five-card draw. At the beginning of every hand, players contribute a small bet called the ante and are dealt three cards; two cards down and one card up. The down cards are called hole cards, and the first card facing up is called the door card. The player with the low card starts off the round of betting. Players are non-positional, which means starting bets may change from round to round and hand-to-hand.

After the round of betting is complete, a player receives his fourth card, or fourth-street. Each round, the high hand initiates all sequential rounds of betting. The seventh card, called the river or seventh street, is dealt face down. The first person to start the last round of action is the first to show. The best five cards determine the winner.

Stud eight or better, is played the same as seven-card stud, but the pot is split between players; the one with the highest valued hand and the other with the lowest. The qualifier in this game is eight, so a low must include five cards with a value of eight or less. If there is no qualifying low hand, the high hand scoops the entire pot.

In Seven-Card Stud games, each round of betting can have three raises and a total of four bets.