Five Card Stud is one of the earliest poker games of all, tracing its roots back to the mid 1830’s when it was the only game played on the Mississippi riverboats. It remained a popular game right up to the mid 20th Century when it starred alongside Steve McQueen in the film “The Cincinnati Kid”, but since then its popularity has been waning.
The Basics
Five Card Stud is a very easy game to master. To begin with each player antes up and is then dealt one card face down and one card face up. There follows a round of betting; the player with the lowest (or in some games the highest) exposed cards begins, and betting continues in a clockwise motion until all bets are equal or only one player remains.
A third card is then dealt to each player, again face-up. There is another round of betting, and then another card is dealt face-up to each player. This continues until all players have five cards: one face down and four face up, after which there is a final round of betting. Once the betting is complete the remaining active players reveal their hidden cards, and the player with the highest five card hand wins.
Basic Strategy
Basic strategy for Five Card Stud is pretty easy. There is a higher ratio of exposed to hidden cards in this game than in any other, meaning you can be a lot more certain about your standing in each hand; guesswork and bluffing play a much smaller part in this game.
The fundamental principal of Five Card Stud strategy is that you must fold your hand if you can see your beaten. Sounds simple? Well it is!
So for example if your hidden card is the 9c and your exposed card is the Kd and your opponent’s exposed card is the Ah then you should fold. Equally if you have Qc (hidden) and Jd-6h (exposed) and your opponent has Kh-Th showing you should fold. It’s really very simple.
Exception to the Rule
There is an exception to the rule – a time when you would be right to call even though you can see you are beaten. If you hold big overcards to an opponent’s visible small pair, and the bet is the right size relative to the pot, then you may be getting the right odds to call. For example if you have A-K-Q and your opponent has x-9-9 then depending on the size of the bet you may get the right odds to call in order to hit a higher pair.
Bluffing
There is very little opportunity to bluff in Five Card Stud. The structure of the game combined with the fact that there is only one hidden card per opponent makes it easy to work out what your opponent has – and vice versa.
The one chance you do have to bluff is on the last card (Fifth Street). Let say for example that you have two exposed jacks and your opponent, with no visible pair, is dealt a queen on Fifth Street. If he were to bet now, his bet would indicate that he had a queen as his hidden card; but does he really have one? This is when your powers of deduction, your reading skills and your attention to detail will come to the fore. You will also get the chance to make such plays, either with or without the genuine winning hand, and then your opponents will be put on the spot.
Getting the Edge
Winning in poker is all about having an edge over your opponents. In Five Card Stud you get the edge by being very focused, paying close attention to detail, and having a good memory.
The main skill is to keep an eye on all the exposed cards, and to remember those that have been folded. That way you may get crucial information relating to the hidden cards of the players still in the pot.
In the example above how can you tell if your opponent really has a hidden queen? Well if you know that two players have already folded exposed queens then you know the chances of him having the queen are pretty small. Similarly if you are thinking about bluffing without the queen think to yourself, how many exposed queens have there been. If no queens have been visible so far in the hand, then your bluff has a good chance of working.