Seven-Card Stud Hi-Lo Games
The seven-card stud has proven to be one of the most popular poker variants out there, its popularity only outshined and outdone by the relatively new favorite, the Texas Hold’em poker game. Still, variations of the seven-card stud continue to permeate the casino scene and give life to the entire casino industry, the poker industry in particular. One such popular inception of the seven-card stud poker game is the seven-card stud hi-lo game.
The seven-card stud hi-lo game follows the concept of a high-low split: If in traditional poker games, the person with the highest hand is considered to be the one with the best hand and wins the whole pot, in the hi-lo game the pot is split 50-50. One half of the pot goes to the traditional winner – that is, the one with the highest hand formed from five or his seven cards – and the other half goes to the person with the lowest hand on the table. There are two ways of playing a hi-lo game: first off, it could be a declaration game, where the player expresses his intent to play a particular hand. What happens is that it becomes a competition between those who declared what: The people who declared they will be playing for the high hand will compete, and the one with the highest hand among them will win half of the pot. Meanwhile, those on the table who declared they will be playing for the low hand will be competing against each other at the showdown and the one with the lowest hand wins the pot. The second way of playing the hi-lo game is the “cards speak”. As the name suggests, this way of playing waits for the outcome of the entire game, and the players do not separate themselves in separate groups; rather, they wait to see who has the highest and the lowest hand at the table, and these two people split the pot. In this method, one can decide to play for the high or the low hand as the game progresses, which is more practical than the former choice.
Determining which hand is considered the high hand is easy, because it follows the traditional rules of choosing the person with the highest hand on the table. However, playing for the low hand usually requries a qualifier. The usual qualifier is the “8 or better”, where a hand being played as a low hand can only be qualified for the prize if it does not contain the cards 9 and above. If no player qualifies for the low hand in a hi-lo game, then the one with the high hand is entitled to the whole pot.