If you’re one of the millions who have begun to play poker online, you likely stick to the televized games such as Texas Hold ‘Em, but the original version of poker is worth revisiting for more than just historical curiousity. Stud poker gives players a unique challenge, one in which they’re playing the purest form of the game with all of its quirks and play moments that are unlike any other game.
Stud poker is any poker game in which players receive a combination of of face-down and face-up cards that are dealt to them during multiple rounds. Stud games are generally non-positional games, meaning that the player who bets first on each round changes from round to round. To simplify this process, it’s often the player whose face-up cards make the best hand for the game being played. The cards dealt face down to each individual player are called hole cards. The phrase “ace in the hole” is derived from the hole cards, meaning that a person has cards that are better than anyone can imagine.
Stud poker goes back to the American Revolutionary War, when the game was a simple three-card version, but by the time of the Civil War, five-card stud had become popular. (The game was also played by people in both gray and blue, which proves that poker is the great universal language.) Later, the seven-card stud game that many play became the standard at most casinos and home games.
There are a ton of variants of poker, and even those will have sub-variants. Six-Card Stud is played the same way as Seven-Card Stud, but the last face-up round is removed, making it two “down” cards, three “up” cards, and one “down” card. A variant of this is Alligator stud, where you get one hole card and one up card and the first round of betting is based on that, and even that has its own varient known as Zanetti stud, where players are given two downcards and one upcard before the first round of betting.
Throw in Razz, Eight-or-better high-low stud, Mississippi Stud, Mexican Stud, High-Low Stud, Scandinavian Stud (also known as Sökö, mind) Show Hand, Kentrel, Dr Pepper, and Telsina along with dozens of others, and you’re looking at a basic poker game that has spawned an entire class of its own. It’s easy to see why so many stud poker players worship the game: there’s always another variation that’s going to challenge them to move forward and become a better player.