By Alex Conde

Before Texas Hold'em rolled into town, seven-card stud was one of the most popular home played poker games. If you feel like your home play of poker is getting a little stale, Seven-Card Stud is a great way to break out of the mold and try something new.

Seven-card stud is a whole different ball game from Texas Hold'em. As with any variant of poker, the hand structure and ranking stays the same, but everything else changes.

Seven-card stud can be played by anywhere from two to eight players at a table. Card and betting arrangements are as follows:

1.To start with, each player receives two face-down cards and one face-up card.

2.The first betting phase occurs, with the player who shows the highest card being the first to bet (for all other rounds, betting can change based on highest hand showing). For example, someone showing Ace would beat someone showing a Ten.

3.One card is burned (discarded), and then each player receives an additional face-up card.

4.Another betting phase occurs.

5.One card is burned, and then each player receives an additional face-up card.

6.Another betting phase occurs.

7.One card is burned, and then each player receives an additional face-up card

8.Another betting phase occurs. .

9.Each player receives a last card, placed face-down.

10.The last betting phase occurs

11.The showdown occurs.

While cards are dealt from the left of the dealer, the betting round always starts with the player showing the highest hand on their face up cards (some people play lowest face up card, while others just start to the left of the dealer to keep it simple). The easiest way to remember the dealing is with this simple system: two down, four up, one down. Players make the best five-card poker hand possible out of the seven cards they are dealt. Now, one caution to note is that if you're playing with all eight players, and they all stay in for some reason, you can run out of cards. So, a good tournament plan is to have an extra deck of cards handy just in case, rather than being forced to reshuffle the burned cards. This issue can be avoided by limiting the game to seven players.

Instead of the blinds used in Texas Hold'em, Seven-Card Stud uses an ante. An ante is a fixed amount that each player must contribute to the pot before a deal is made. The amount of the ante is agreed upon by the players before a game is begun and stays constant.

As with Texas Hold'em, one of the challenges in Seven-Card stud is to guess what a person has in their hidden cards based on how they bet. However, Seven-Card requires you to relearn all of your odds, because with each person having their own seven cards, your instincts from hold'em won't help you here. So, keep an open mind and enjoy yourself!