How to Play Five Card Stud

Best 5 Card Stud Rooms
1.	Ultimate Bet Poker	Play Now
2.	Sportsbook Poker	Play Now
3.	PokerStars	Play Now
4.	Full Tilt Poker	Play Now
5.	PlayersOnly Poker	Play Now

Welcome to Five Card Stud

Good ‘ole poker. Simple as walking and as American as baseball, it’s probably the first game you learned sitting around the kitchen table with your grandmother. But what do you really know about 5-Card Stud? And more importantly, how can you make sure the next time you walk through those casino doors (online or otherwise) grandma’s schnookums doesn’t become somebody else’s fool?

As always, we here at GP have taken it upon ourselves to keep you safe and sound with an everything guide that can turn even the worst 5-Card punk into an all-out card croaker. So tell that little, ‘ole granny of yours not to fret: either we’ll have her boy playing top-notch poker in no time, or so help us we’ll all eat a grimy ball cap or two...

Five Card Stud Rules and Betting Procedures

Maybe you think you already know how 5-Card works, but believe it or not, about 90 percent of players who sidle up to a table—or log on to a virtual one—don’t know the most basic aspects of the game. So first things first, let’s start exactly where the game starts in any other environment, with a standard 52-card deck. (Assuming you’ve got one of these lying around the house, now might be a good time to crack it open and follow along).

A typical game of 5-Card outside your living room begins with an ante. This is usually 10 percent of the table limit so that, for instance, at a $10 table the ante would be $1, a $100 table $10, and so on. Once every player has chipped in, the dealer shuffles up and divvies out one card face down and one card face up to each of them, starting on his left. As in other forms of stud, the face-down card is referred to as the “hole” card—hence the old, familiar phrase “Ace in the hole”—and like other games as well, you probably don’t want to go showing many folks besides yourself what it is. Meanwhile the face-up card, known as the “open”, determines how the first round of betting will proceed, with the player holding the lowest ranking open (determined first by number, then by suit) paying the “bring-in” and choosing between betting half the lower limit rounded up—say for example, at a $2 table the lower limit is $1, then the lowest he could bet would be $1—or raising the stakes at the get-go. Only after a bring-in is determined and paid does the betting then proceed clockwise around the table with the next player to the left.

This process of dealing and betting is repeated three more times as the “Third Street,” “Fourth Street” and “River” cards are dealt face up to each player. In subsequent rounds however, the player with the highest ranking face-up hand begins the betting, ensuring that most of the players will have a chance to influence the tone of the game. Of course like every other game of the poker ilk, the player who starts a round of betting can “check” (i.e. not bet and pass the decision on to the next player), “fold” (decide not to continue playing and throw his cards away in disgust) or bet, and every player following him can necessarily do likewise—except in the case of checking which goes out the door as soon somebody bets. Finally, the game ends after a round of betting has been played on the River with the remaining players going into a “Showdown” phase where the last person to raise shows their hole first and the other remaining players choose to either follow suit or bow out gracefully by “mucking” their cards. Whoever’s left at this point then compares their cards, and the player(s) with the highest ranking hand takes the pot.

Five Card Stud Strategy

As THE oldest form of Stud Poker, 5-Card has the drawback of only having only one hole. This essentially makes it easy for even the novice poker player to keep a handle on what’s on the table, thus contributing to its declining popularity among casinos and The World Poker Tour since the mid 1970s. No lie, 5-Card IS generally just an easy all-around game, but there are still a few ways you can use that one measly hole card to put the screws to your opponents.

Bluffing

Where to Play

Titan Poker

Full Review Visit

After several hours of bouncing our stress relievers off the walls here in Poker.Gamblingplanet's editorial department, we’ve finally managed to widdle this already marginal list of strategies down to the three easiest to wrap your head around:

STAR WARS—Like the legendary “space program” of the Reagan era, sometimes making your opponent think you’ve got something you don’t is a keen idea. This is one of the fundamental concepts in bluffing, but to pull it off in 5-Card, you’re going to have to go in for the long game. First off, you’ll need to enter the table playing sloppy, folding whenever you have an obviously bad open and betting whenever you have reasonably good cards into Fourth Street. This will keep your opponents sure you’re playing like a fresh-faced newb and are only going to bet when you’ve got something to bet on. Once you’ve got them hooked—and you’ll be able to tell by their constant jeers—look for a solid face-up showing, say three Jacks and one Queen with only a 2 secretly pocketed in your hole. Then, just before the showdown leave raising to your opponent, thus forcing him to decide whether or not he wants to show first. If he’s bluffing just as badly as you are, he’ll probably fold rather than go in on a losing hand, meaning that all those pretty little chips will soon be taking up residence on your side of the table.

MIND GAMES—This bluffing strategy follows the same line as the first, except this time once you get to that big bluffing hand, raise last. This will put you in the position to show first so that, when the time comes to do so, you can act confused and force the dealer to remind you. Sometimes of course you might win merely on the strength of the lesser hand (as in the three Jacks from our previous example), but in any case, don’t worry about what you’ve won or lost because now you’ll really have your opponents sure you don’t know up from down. And since you’ve been playing a conservative game so far you’re bound to have just enough chips for the final coup de grace. The last step in playing this strategy then is to go back to playing timid poker for another few games until you really get a doozy of a hand that relies on your hole card—for example a straight-flush with the King in your hole. Then, follow the same process as before, except this time don’t raise in the showdown. Your opponents will be so sure that you’ve only made one minor tweak in your over-all strategy that they’ll probably do it themselves, and once you’ve met their bets they’ll be locked-in. After that it’s merely a matter of flipping over the hole and letting your straight, four-of-a-kind or flush show you aren’t such a schmuck after all.

RIDING DIRTY—Another easy technique to pulling in the 5-Card pot, is simply letting a game ride. This strategy is all about timing and works best early on. Really all you have to do then is check whenever possible and meet all raises up to the River. By that time if everybody’s still shooting blanks and you’ve suddenly happened upon a Queen, King or Ace, put on a goony, partially-concealed smile, check your hole once or twice and raise big. In all probability they won’t have had a chance to read your expressions yet and will be scared enough to scamper off the board and leave you swimming in chips. On the other hand, if nothing great comes down the River, you can always just fold and bide your time, with minimal losses on the whole.

Hand and Suit Rankings in Five Card Stud

Perhaps it goes without saying that the same basic hand rankings you’ll see in Texas Holdem, 7-Card Stud or just about every other card game you bet on apply in 5-Card as well. But just in case you and Grandma were playing Go Fish instead of Poker, the following combinations and suits (in descending order) are exactly what you should be shooting for as you progress through your first ever 5-Card game:

Poker Hands

Standard Suit Rankings

Spades (♠)
Hearts (♥)
Clubs (♣)
Diamonds (♦)

Print Send to friend

Top of Page

News

Editorials