The Complete Guide › Module 5: Mixed Games — Omaha, Stud & Lowball
How to Deal Seven-Card Stud & Razz
Stud games throw out two things hold'em and Omaha dealers lean on constantly: there's no community board, and there's no dealer button deciding who acts first. Everything about who goes first, street by street, comes from the cards players are showing — which means the dealer has to actually read those up cards correctly, every single street, to keep the game moving.
Who brings it in on third street
With no button, the very first action of the hand is a forced bet called the bring-in, and it goes to whoever has the worst up card showing — but “worst” depends entirely on which game you're dealing. In regular seven-card stud, the lowest up card brings it in, with suit breaking ties in reverse alphabetical order (spades highest, clubs lowest, so the deuce of clubs is the single lowest possible bring-in card). In Razz, where the whole game is about making the lowest hand, it flips: the highest up card brings it in, and the ace always counts as low — so a player showing an ace can never be forced to bring it in, in either game.
Always announce the bring-in by rank and suit, not just a generic “you're first.” Saying “three of spades brings it in” does two things: it's unambiguous about who's acting, and if you've misread the board and there's actually a lower three out there, saying the suit out loud gives the table a chance to catch your mistake before any money moves.
Completing instead of calling
The player who brings it in has two options, and this part is the same across every stud variant: post the small forced bring-in amount, or complete straight up to the full first-round betting limit. A complete does not count as a raise — so in a $4/$8 game with a $1 bring-in, a complete to $4 still leaves a full bet and three raises available after it. If a player tries to put in some in-between amount instead of a clean bring-in or complete, treat it as whichever one it's closer to: an amount nearer the bring-in gets treated as that forced bet (needing the rest added to complete), while an amount more than halfway to the complete gets rounded up and the player is required to complete.
Action shifts after third street
Third street is the only street where up-card rank decides who goes first. From fourth street on, action starts with whoever has the best hand showing — the best high hand in regular stud, the best low hand in Razz — and that can be a completely different seat every street as new cards come out. A pair showing always counts against a player for this purpose: in Razz, four unpaired low cards beat a pair of aces for determining who's “low,” even though aces are individually the lowest-ranked card in the deck.
The betting structure
A typical stud game is quoted as two numbers, like four-eight limit: the first two betting rounds (third and fourth street) use the lower number, and the last three rounds (fifth, sixth, and seventh street) use the higher number. Most stud games also carry a small ante from every player before the deal, separate from and usually much smaller than the bring-in. House rules vary on whether an ante is used at all and what the exact bring-in amount is — confirm it rather than assuming.
- Dealing the first card to the wrong seat. The very first card of a stud hand always goes to the seat immediately left of the dealer button, regardless of who ends up bringing it in.
- Not knowing the procedure when the stub runs low on seventh street. There's a specific, correct way to handle running short of cards late in a stud hand — know it before it happens rather than improvising at the table.
- Burning a card on top of the pot instead of underneath it. When a card needs to be discarded near the pot, burn it underneath the pot, not stacked visibly on top.
- Restating the raise amount instead of using standard limit-game language. In a limit game, the correct dealer calls are “raise, re-raise, cap” rather than repeating the specific number each time, which can actually confuse players used to limit structure.
- A couple of card decks — stud is dealt one card at a time across up to seven rounds per player, so real reps matter here more than most games.
- A chip tray or rack — useful for drilling the bring-in / complete distinction with real chips.
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