Razz Poker

Razz poker is probably the weirdest of all of the forms of poker. It has a fair sized following and it might confuse you to start of with.

The object of Razz poker is to make the lowest possible hand. When playing Razz, flushes or straights do not affect your low hand.

The ultimate hand in Razz is to hit a 5 high straight (A, 2, 3, 4, 5). In Razz poker holding an Ace is always good in helping you make up a low hand as it always plays as a low Ace.

How to play Razz Poker

Razz poker is played with anything from 2 to 8 players.

To start of proceedings everyone puts in their ante. Each player is dealt two cards face down and one facing up. It then changes a bit here from how Seven-Card Stud works. The face up card is called the door card.

Cards are ranked according to suit as well in the following order from weakest to strongest:
Hearts, diamonds, clubs and then spades.

The worst possible card you can be dealt as a door card is the King of spades. This means automatically that you have to place the bring-in bet. From there the play continues to that player’s left.

A round of betting follows and once it is completed, the next card is dealt face up in front of each player. This card is called the turn or fourth street.

From here on in things change a little. The following round of betting will start with the player with the highest card showing… and then play continues to his or her left. The fifth card or river will then be dealt.

Another round of betting follows before the sixth card is dealt face up in front of each player. After another round of betting, a seventh card is dealt. A last round of betting follows before players show their cards.

As Razz works totally in reverse, you would be looking at different starting hands as strong starting hands. The strongest possible hand to start with would be A, 2, 3. It is also generally accepted that three cards with a value lower than 8 is a good starting hand… and none of these cards should be paired.

To go with your starting hand, you need to look at the cards you are holding as well as the door cards for the other players at the table. If you see that the chances of you pairing your cards are very slim, you are in a good position. You would ideally like not to pair any of your cards and this would be a great starting point for cancelling out any possible problem cards hitting on the next few streets.

A strategy used often, is to steal bring-in bets and antes where possible. Position is key here and it is usually a good idea to play from just to the right of the player who placed the bring-in bet two positions to the right.

If you hold a lower doorway card than that person and everyone has folded, you can safely put in a raise in most instances and take down the antes and bring-in bet.