Most people grow up thinking of poker as a game of royal flushes, full houses, flushes, and straights, and indeed, in most forms of poker, these kinds of hands win a lot of money.
There are also several kinds of poker where these "powerful" hands are worthless. Perhaps they were invented by someone who felt he never got his fair share of good cards, but in games like Razz-which is 7-card stud played for low-the player with the LOWEST hand wins the pot.
Today, though, we're going to talk about a form of poker that is a hybrid of these other two kinds of poker, a combination of the high-only games and the low-only games: high-low poker.
In a high-low game (which I'll be calling hi-lo from now on), the player owning the highest hand wins half the pot, and the player owning the lowest hand wins the other half. So, for example, in a 7-stud hi-lo game, if the following three hands were around at the finish…
(Cards that are bold or dark are hole cards.)
| Player A |
Player B |
Player C |
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Player A: 2h-4h-6d-9s-7c-Kd-Ad
Player B: Kh-Ks-2d-4d-4c-7d-9c
Player C: 5d-5s-5h-8h-Js-4s-Qd
Players A and C would take the money. Player A has a "7-low," that is, he can form a 5-card poker hand comprised of an 7, 6, 4, 2 and Ace. Player C has three of a kind-three fives. Player B is stuck in the middle. His two pair (Kings and Fours) don't beat Player C's trips, and his King-low (because of the pairs, the five lowest cards Player B can assemble without including a pair are K, 9, 7, 4, 2) isn't as low as Player A's 7-low.
Don't race out to play hi-low poker just yet, though, because there are a few critically important rules and considerations you still need to learn.
Hand Rankings in Low Poker
As we've seen in the examples, a low hand is defined by the highest card in the hand; someone holding 8-5-4-3-2 would announce he has an 8-low. If someone else says "me, too," you might hear the first player say "8-5" (or in poker slang he might say "eighty-five") and the second player say "you win" if he held 8-6-4-3-2, which is an "8-6" low. This is similar to what happens in high poker, where if two players each hold a pair of Kings, the next highest card decides the hand (for example, K-K-J-10-4 beats K-K-10-9-8). In low poker, if two players have similar lows, you look at the next highest of the low cards, until someone holds a lower one. For example, a player holding 8-6-5-4-3 beats a player holding 8-7-4-3-2, and a player holding 7-5-3-2-A beats a player holding 7-5-4-2-A.
The Eight Qualifier Rule
In most forms of hi-lo poker, for a hand to win the low side, it must be an 8-low, or better. This "qualifying" feature of the game is usually identified in the game's name. For example, most of the time when 7-stud is dealt in a hi-lo form, the game is called "7-Card Stud, Eight-or-Better for Low," or just "7-Card Stud, Eight-or-Better."
Suppose we stick with the same sample hand I used above:
| Player A
| Player B
| Player C
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|
|
|
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Player A: 2h-4h-6d-9s-7c-Kd-Ad
Player B: Kh-Ks-2d-4d-4c-7d-9c
Player C: 5d-5s-5h-8h-Js-4s-Qd
But suppose now we make the game 7-Card Stud, Eight-or-Better, and gave Player A, for his final card, not the Ace of Diamonds, but instead the 10 of Hearts. In that case, Player C would win the entire pot, because Player A's best low hand is 9-7-6-4-2. He has a 9-low, and a 9-low is useless in an "Eight or Better" game. Only an 8-low (or better, such as a 7-low, 6-low, or 5-low), qualifies for winning the low half.
Such endings, where a player is drawing at a promising low, but misses, are common and frustrating in 7-Card Stud, Eight-or-Better games. For example, suppose you start off with 2d-3d-4d-5d. This is the sort of start that professional hi-lo players dream about. Four very low cards that also have terrific high potential: either an Ace or a Six will make a low straight, and any Diamond will give this player a flush. It is a magnificent hi-lo starting hand.
(In hi-lo games, the fact that A-2-3-4-5 is also a straight doesn't keep it from being the best possible low hand; in certain forms of low-only poker, if a hand is a straight, it isn't considered low.)
Yet this dream can turn into a nightmare, because poker is a five-card game, not a four-card game. If the player who starts 2d-3d-4d-5d finishes with 9s-Kc-Jh, the player now has a completely worthless hand. He has not "qualified" for low, because his 9-5-4-3-2 isn't an 8-low or better, and his best high hand is K-J-9-5-4, and that collection of junk isn't going to win the high side of many pots.
Nonetheless, just because the dream start 2d-3d-4d-5d won't always connect doesn't mean you shouldn't hope to start that way. This kind of hand is your goal, because it has the potential to win BOTH high and low. It has the potential not merely to split half the pot, but to "scoop" or "hog" the whole pot.
The Cardinal Rules of Hi-Lo Poker
When trying to figure out what kind of starting hands to play in any form of hi-lo poker, keep these two principles in mind:
1. You prefer hands that have a chance to win the entire pot, not just half of it, even though you might wind up settling for half of it.
2. Hands that start off low can "accidentally" wind up high… but hands that start high can't become low.
For example, suppose you start off with 4-5-6 in a 7-Card Stud, Eight-or-Better game. This is a nice hand, much better than an average start, because you hold three cards to a 6-low and they also have nice potential to turn into a straight. Yet even if you fail to make the 6-low or the straight, your hand still might turn out nicely. Suppose your final four cards were 5-8-6-5; you'd have wound up with a full house when you started off trying to make a low hand.
High-Only Hands are Uni-Directional
It's hard, and sometimes impossible, for the reverse to happen, though. If your first three cards are K-K-Q, you cannot make a low hand in an Eight-or-better game. You need five cards that are eight or lower to do that, and with only four cards left to come, you can't get there. You are irrevocably committed to playing for high.
That doesn't mean you should immediately throw the K-K-Q away, especially if you don't see any other Kings or Queens in anyone else's hand. In fact, such a hand can often be worth a raise, in an effort to drive out potential low hands. But if your high hand doesn't improve, and if you start to see boards like 4-5-6 and A-3-4, you are probably in very bad trouble, because
a) You are in all likelihood playing for only half the pot, because someone will probably make a low hand, and
b) Those low opposing hands might easily turn into a straight, or Aces-up, or something like 3 Threes, meaning that you won't even win the high half.
Not all hi-lo games employ the Eight-or-Better qualifier, and in a game that doesn't, the K-K-Q starting hand still has a chance to get the low half. Not a good chance, not even a poor chance, but at least a chance. In Eight-or-Better, it has zero chance.
In cardrooms and casinos, the two games you are most likely to see played in hi-lo form are 7-Card Stud, Eight-or-Better, and Omaha Eight-or-Better. Most of the hi-lo poker played in card casinos involves the eight-qualifier.
The presence of the eight-qualifier gives the high-only hands like K-K-Q more hope, because if no one makes a qualifying low hand, the best high hand takes the whole pot, giving high hands some scooping potential. A hand like 7-5-4-3-2, while very nice for the low side, has no scooping potential, unless everyone else folds.
Home Game Hi-Lo and the Declare Rule
In home poker games, you will very often see hi-lo games played without a qualifier, but instead with a "declare." This means that after all the cards have been dealt out, each player takes two chips out of sight underneath the table, and places either zero, one, or two chips in his hand. Everyone still in the pot brings one hand back up into view, and everyone opens that hand simultaneously.
If you place zero chips in your hand, your are "declaring" for low. If you place one chip in your hand, you are declaring for high, and if you place two chips in your hand, you are declaring for both. If you declare both ways, you have to win both ways, which can make a hand like A-2-3-4-5 a bit scary. You have an immortal lock for low, but if someone else has a flush, and you've declared both ways, your hand wins nothing.
The rules about who wins the money in this situation vary from game to game. In some games, the flush that knocked off the dual-declarer gets the whole pot. In others, the flush would get half the pot and the next best low declarer would get the other half. If you declare both ways, and everyone else declares in a s |
