Playing a hand from seven card stud part one

Hand: (10s-9c) 10h

I have sometimes heard it said that a very good seven card stud player has a “license to print money”. Well I must be missing a licence somewhere because my results have never been that great in this form of poker but it is a game that I had to work on to get by in the live poker cash games.

I must confess to not liking the game but I don’t think that this has anything to do with my mediocre results but more to do with the slowness of seven card stud compared to other forms of poker.

Plus I have never been blessed with a great memory and to be a good seven card stud player requires you to have a good memory as remembering the dead cards is a vital part of the game. But I think that with all of the new players who are coming into the game knowing only no limit hold’em or limit hold’em then becoming proficient in other forms of poker other than hold’em may just be the way to go in 2010 and beyond.

No limit and certainly limit games are getting tougher and this is certainly the case online although live games like these are still easily beatable at the time of writing. One problem that many players who are new to stud have is in deciding on hand selection and how long to stay with drawing hands.

In this hand however, a player to my right raised with the Kd showing. Normally in this situation it would be wise to show a little care but this player liked to push people around and most of the table was a little tight meaning that they would show his exposed king a lot of respect unless they had a hand and I think that he knew this. I looked at him for a second or two but I just did not believe that he had another king but I needed to isolate against him so I re-raised the pot.

This decision was not taken lightly because as in all forms of poker, the biggest decision that you can make in a hand is whether or not to come into the pot at all. But I usually don’t like to call raises in any form of poker and stud is no different. It was folded around to my opponent who called the raise.

The fourth card gave me the 8c which helped my straight chances but did little else to help my hand other than that. My opponent received the 6c to make his hand (? – ?) Kd 6c. I had seen a six passed and I felt sure that all he had was maybe a couple of unpaired Broadway cards and that my pair of tens was best. I held (10s-9c) 10h 8c and bet out again after my opponent checked to which they called.

Fifth card for me was the 9d giving me two pair and my opponent received the Js to make his hand (? – ?) Kd 6c Js. Look out for the culmination of this hand in part two.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson
Author – “Winning Cash Game Poker”

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