Five card stud isn’t a poker game that’s played by a lot of people online or in casinos, but you can find some action in some of the bigger poker rooms if you’re looking to play cash games. Generally five card stud is played using fixed limit betting rules, so for the sake of this article we’re going to assume you’re playing limit five card stud.
Gameplay
When you want to start playing five card stud you can choose a single dealer or you can take turns with the other players that you’re playing with. At the beginning of every hand every player needs to put an ante into the pot. If you’re playing a game of $5/$10 stud then the ante would be $1-$2 depending on how much money you’re playing with. Once everyone puts there ante into the pot the dealer can deal out one face down card and one face up card.
In order to determine who acts first you need to see who has the lowest face up card. The player with the lowest face up card needs to put in a forced bet of $2.50 or $5 if we’re using the same stakes as above. Once the player makes the forced bet each player has the chance to call, raise or fold his or her cards. After the betting each player still in the hand is dealt a face up card. The player with the highest face up card on 3rd street starts the round of betting by either checking or betting. The bet size is $5 during this round of betting.
Once everyone is done betting the dealer can deal out another face up card. This round of betting the bet size moves up to $10 so it’s a good time to build up the pot. If there are still two or more player still in the hand with cards the dealer can deal out one more face up card to each player. There is a final round of betting using the $10 bet size and then the hand is brought to showdown, which is simply where anyone still in the hand flips over their only face down card to determine what they have.
The winner of the hand in five card stud is the player with the best 5-card poker hand. Since you can see four of your opponent’s cards it’s fairly easy to see what they might have or might be implying they have. Five card stud is a fun poker game to play with your friends since you can bluff a lot and it’s fairly inexpensive to play since it’s a limit game.
