Ultimate Hi/Lo Poker Guide

PokerVIP Coaching• 5,882 Views • on 28/10/16

If you want to be a mix-game player stud hi/lo is one of the more enjoyable places to start; and given what a game theoretical grind parts of modern hold’em have become it’s always good to know at least one other variant.

Seven card stud hi/lo eight or better is one of the standard parts of any mixed game format. It is the E (for ‘eight or better’) in HORSE and is one of the eight games in a standard eight game mix. Outside of that context you are unlikely to find it put on very often in home games outside the US, and even in the US most stud hi/lo is played in casinos.

Online isn’t much better, PokerStars run a few micro-stakes Hi/Lo tourneys daily and there seem to be reasonable number of cash players as long as you don’t mind playing down in the $0.04/$0.08 games.

On the other hand, if you want to be a mix-game player stud hi/lo is one of the more enjoyable places to start; and given what a game theoretical grind parts of modern hold’em have become it’s always good to know at least one other variant for your buddy’s dealer’s choice game.

The Rules of the Game

For a blow by blow of the sequence of play check out any online guide. But here are the basics:

1) The game is played with limit-betting.

2) Players ante-up (usually around 1/10 of the big bet).

3) Each player is dealt two cards face down and one card face up. There is a betting round. Action on this round starts with a forced bet from the player with the lowest card showing.

4) Players are then dealt the next cards one at a time with a betting round after each card. The betting on each of these rounds starts with the player with the strongest hand showing.

In the betting round directly after the 5th card is dealt the bet increases from the small bet to the big bet.
Seventh street is dealt face down to the players.

5) At showdown the pot is split evenly between the best regular poker hand and the best lowball hand.

The lowball hand uses A-5 ranking, not 2-7. Straights and flushes do not count against your hand.
Low hands must qualify by being made up of five unpaired cards lower than an 8.
If there is no qualifying low hand, the best high hand takes the whole pot.

Check out an online manual for the nuances of these rules.

For example hands I have used bracketed cards for the hole, and x’s for unknown or irrelevant cards. I have arranged them in the order they were dealt. For example (Ac-2c) 3c-4c-5c-x (x) we are looking at a completed hand in which the player was dealt a club wheel with sixth and seventh street being irrelevant cards.

Let’s get down to it.

General Principles

The prime directive of every Hi/Lo player is this: Always aim to scoop the entire pot. There are times when this doesn’t apply, but those are the edge cases (e.g. like when you have a made low and the other two players are clearly only playing high).

The prime corollary to the prime directive is: Always be the guy who is freerolling, where freerolling is a situation when you have one half of the pot locked up, and you also have outs to take the other half of the pot. You are not freerolling when the opposing player still has outs that might let him scoop.

For example: you are playing (Ac-2c) 4h-6c-7h-3c and your opponent is showing Qh-Qd-9h-2s. Not accounting for cards folded by other players on other rounds your opponent cannot qualify for a low hand and you have outs to take the high half of the pot too if you hit a five or a club on the river.

Note that this would not be a pure freeroll if their 9h were changed to a 3. Then they could be hiding a draw to a better low. As your hand reading improves, you’ll be able to get a better sense of how ‘clean’ a freeroll you are on in hands like this.

You do not want to find yourself regularly giving away freerolls. Make learning how to spot those situations a priority.

Starting Hands - Playing Low Cards

As with most poker, starting hand selection is the first, most important thing to get a handle on. Possibly more so in hi/lo games where you will often be playing to showdown; you want your hand to have showdown value.

The very best starting hands play give you a decent shot at scooping the pot: three low cards with straight/flush potential, or low pairs with an ace (suited, ideally). The very best hands means three card lows (all three cards 8 or below).

With that in mind, a rough hierarchy of these three card low starting hands looks like this:

Toppest: Three card straight flush e.g. (4h-5h) 6h
2nd: A-high three flush (Ah-6h) 7h
2.1st: Three flush (3h-5h) 7h
3rd: Open ended three straight, wheel draw with the ace being the strongest e.g. (A-2) 3, (3-5) 4
4th: Three card one gappers e.g. (2-3) 5
5th: Ace-low. Just an ace and two unsuited cards that’ll give you a shot at the low e.g. (A-4) 8.

Like all of these sorts of hierarchy, it is somewhat situational, and in spots where all your opponent's’ up-cards are spades you might be happier with an unsuited wheel draw than the (As-7s) 8s.

Keep the following points in mind when working out whether to throw in an opening raise, or to throw in your cards:

Avoid middling cards – 7s, 8s, 9s are death to your equity. They result in shitty lows and shitty highs. There is some leeway when there is no card higher than an 8 up. But generally, avoid playing these cards. Especially when they are paired.
Maximizing pot size. In spots where you are particularly strong, the good-enough to call, good enough to raise maxim from limit hold’em doesn’t always apply. If you are first to bet, by all means raise, but if it is raised behind you, calling, and thereby luring people into a multiway pot can increase your $EV in some spots.
Counter intuitively, because your strongest starting hands earn more multiway and your weaker hands play better shorthanded you often want to raise the living hell out of your Ace-low hands to push out low pairs, and weaker big card type hands that might nick the high-half of your pot. While your straight flushes you might be looking to call a raise and keep people drawing to worse hands.
Rolled up trips are interesting, especially if low because your hand is disguised. (5c-5h) 5s looks a lot like (As-2s) 5s if you come out firing. How you use this disguise will depend on what everyone else is showing, but it is worth bearing in mind.

Starting Hands - Playing High Card Starting Hands

The next best thing after a hand which goes both ways and a solid low hand, is a strong high hand. Again the value of hands is slightly counter-intuitive. Hands which aren’t worth much in regular stud high can become strong high hands if everyone else is going low. This is because low hands must qualify meaning they must have five cards below eight. Therefore big pairs are probably overpairs.

Your(K-K) Q has the potential to look especially good if your opponent catches bad a couple of times. For example their (Ah-2h) 3h is only a black T-9 away from looking like a hot mess against you, even if you catch rags – in fact, especially if you catch rags, as every rag you catch is one of their outs to a low.

However, you have to be confident your high is good. Unlike low starting hands where you may backdoor a good high-hand, you can’t back door a low with three high cards, so you need to be damn sure your high is good.

That goes for other players too. While playing (T-T) K against a player who's put money in with a face card up, if your up card is better there may be room to bluff them. If their hand is (Q-K) Q or (J-J) Q then your face up K is potentially a scare card if you can play it so it like you would (K-x) K.

Once you have a sense for why and how these hands play well, you can start to see where they have potential to scoop the pot despite being more marginal.

(9h-7h) 8h might have some value as a hidden hand or if your opponent's all seem to be drawing one way AND your outs are all live; but it will look a lot less appetizing if on fourth street you’re looking at two opponents playing (x-x) 4s-6h and (x-x) Js-Jh or (x-x) 3h-4h and (x-x) 9s-Ts. In that spot it looks like your against hands which could draw and beat you for both pots.

Later Streets - Calculating Odds

With stud hi/lo so much more information is available to you than in hold’em so you better be using it. Not only can you see a separate board for each player, you get to see far more of the deck. In an eight person game you see 19% of the deck right from the get go. In hold’em you see less than that by the river.

So pay attention to what card people have folded, it can make a huge difference to your odds when drawing.

To get a better sense of this, you might want to play around with an odds calculator as much as possible, using real situations from the games you play. This will help you get a sense of how these factors change the odds.

Later Streets - Hand Reading

It will also help massively with hand reading, allowing you to eliminate combinations from your opponents’ ranges.

Additionally, since you already know one third of your opponent’s hand on the first round, their actions on third street will often be the strongest indicator of what kind of hand they are playing.

For example: an opponent who plays (x-x) Kh with a ton of raising indicates another king or a strong pair in the hole. Weaker play from them – just calling – might be three high cards (Ax-Jx) Kh or a strong two card ace-low which they think they can draw to using the king as cover. How they react to their fourth street card should easily narrow that down.

Exceptions to the Middling Cards Rule

There are cases where the dreaded 7s, 8s and 9s can actually be playable. And that is when you are sure your opponent is only playing for only the high hand. In that situation (8-7) 6 and (7-6) 5 type hands play well as any low hand will take half the pot.

Since straights are in your opponent’s range as well, you have between one and three possible blockers to their Q-high or lower straights.

Plus, if you pick up a low hand of any kind you are freerolling for the rest of the pot. On top of that, if you hit your high, it is potentially disguised. For example if your (6-8) 7-3 hand hits a nine on fifth street, it looks like you missed your low to your opponent. Whereas you actually just picked up an open ended straight draw.

These general pointers should be enough to get you started, but as you progress through the game you may want to browse the 2+2 stud forums or browse Doyle Brunson’s section on stud eight or better in Super/System 2.