The games · Coolhand Poker

Seven Card Stud

Seven cards each, four dealt face up. The highest five-card hand takes the pool, and the open cards tell you plenty as you go.

18+ · Nothing to win but the hand.

Players: 2 to 7
Family: Stud
App: Coolhand Poker · iOS and Android, soon

How it goes

Seven cards come to you a few at a time, four of them face up for the whole table. There's no swapping. After each new card there's a round of offers: put tokens in the pool, match what someone else put in, or pass. At the end you make the best five cards you can from your seven, in the ordinary high-hand order: a pair, then two pair, three of a kind, a run, five of one suit, and so on up. The highest hand at the reveal takes the pool. Watch the open cards as you go, because they show what everyone else can make.

A good hand

Three of a kind in your first three cards is the strongest start in the game, and it doesn't come often. A big pair is worth going on with. So are three cards of one suit, on their way to five, as long as that suit isn't already spread across everyone else's open cards. Judge your hand against what's showing, not on its own.

The usual mistake

Playing a small pair because it's a pair. If a bigger pair is already showing face up across the table, you're behind before the next card lands, and a small pair has very little to draw to. Look at the open cards before you put tokens in.

Played differently where you are?

Card games change from table to table, and we researched some of these games instead of playing them. If Seven Card Stud goes differently where you play it, tell us. That's one of the things the closed beta is for.

The closed beta is by invitation. How to ask to join.