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7 Card Stud 8 or Better Poker Rules

7 Card Stud 8 or better is a variation of the 7 Card Stud game, which is completely described on that web page. 7 Card Stud 8 or better is also known as "7 Card Stud Hi/Lo", and is a game where pots are split between the player with the highest hand and the player with the lowest hand. This feature makes the game quite unique in that there are 2 winning hands each game. As in 7 Card Stud, the game is played with up to 8 players, and each player is dealt 7 cards (3 "face down" and 4 "face up").

The rules of the game are very identicial to the rules outlined on our 7 Card Stud web page, with the following additional caveats:

In 7 Card Stud 8 or better games, the pot is divided between BOTH the Hi and Lo hands; i.e., 2 players are victorious in each game. Moreover, Lo or Hi best hands are garnered from the same set of cards.

One single hand can win both the Lo and the Hi pots. For example, a hand called "the Wheel", which contains an Ace, 2, 3, 4, and 5, can be eligible to win both the Lo and Hi hands.

For a given hand, if there is no definitive Lo hand victor, the best Hi hand winds up winning the entire pot.

In the splitting of a given pot, a Hi hand victor will receive any odd chip, over the person with the best Lo hand.

Other than that, all the rules of an 7 Card Stud apply except that a qualifier of cards having to be 8-or-lower for the Lo hand applies. This means is that the winning lo hand can only contain cards under the value of 9, and that is where the games' name derivation comes from.

Some interesting ramifications of the 7 Card Stud 8 or Better rules are that flushes and straights do not count against you when you are looking to win the Lo game. Additionally, you can use different cards in your hand (and the community cards) for the Hi portion and different cards for the Lo portion of your Hi/Lo hand considerations. Moreover, you can even use the identical cards for both the Hi and Lo hands.