Stud Strategy – Impact of Eliminating Fourth Street Double Bet

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Recently, we completed a series of articles on Seven Card Stud strategy. When crafting these articles, it overlooked an important development during the Summer at the Poker Tournament Directors Association Summit.

During the summit, a major rule change was made for casino taking advantage of TDA rules for their tournaments. In Seven Card Stud games, a double bet is no longer allowed on Fourth Street. This means that a player with an open pair on Fourth Street can only bet the small bet amount.

Since the TDA is the gold standard for live poker tournaments, we felt it important to address this rule change when considering Stud strategy.

How Does the Lack of a Double Bet Change Strategy?

The lack of a double bet on Fourth Street takes away an important weapon for Stud poker players. In almost any game you’ll ever play, the double bet is used to apply pressure to other players. The player with the open pair is representing no worse than two pair and you will have to pay extra to chase them down.

With the new rule in place, you can only bet the small bet amount when you catch an open pair. While you’re still representing a strong hand, the cost to continue in the hand is less than it should be. Players that are evaluating their play based on big bets will make a few more marginal calls in this spot.

As the bettor, your strategy isn’t going to change a lot here. The exception is when you’re playing against a maniac player. In this case, you can try to induce a check-raise to bump up the pot, but there’s also a good chance that a maniac will bump a standard bet.

Chasing Against an Open Pair

When you’re facing an open pair, the lack of a double bet can help you make a call you might not normally make. If you’re looking at a hand such as a pair of kings and your opponent catches open jacks, you might fold in a lot of spots. Since you’re only calling half a bet, you may consider continuing with those kings, especially if your opponent is playing loose.

The main spot you’ll consider making the call is with your draws. When you have an open-ended straight draw or a flush draw, you’re going to make a call on Fourth Street nearly every time. You’re basically getting half price compared to the way things used to be in Stud.

New Rule to Help Inexperienced Dealers

The reality of this rule change is that it is exclusively for live poker tournaments where dealers seldom have experience dealing Stud. They don’t know the rules that well and it can hold up the game. Stud 8 and Razz do not have a double bet option, so taking the double bet out of Stud High makes the rules simpler.

Unfortunately, it does not help you as a poker player. It changes the way you play Fourth Street and can often cost you money in a hand. Like some pros, we do not like this new rule change. Hopefully, it is readdressed in the future, but since Stud is played so infrequently outside of the World Series of Poker, it is unlikely to become an issue.

For now, this change is mainly for live poker. It should not transfer over to online poker. However, don’t be surprised to see some online poker rooms adopt the change. If a major online poker room like PokerStars or partypoker decide to enact the change, most other poker rooms offering Stud will follow suit.