Churchill Downs, in Louisville, Kentucky and the surrounding environs is known as a great stud horse farm. What's less known, but no less exciting, is the great stud poker game near them at Caesar's Indiana across the river from Louisville. I flew there recently to take my daughter to the Muhammed Ali Center and Museum. At night, after putting her to bed, I drove the twenty minutes or so to the glorious spot on the other side of the Ohio River -- Caesar's Indiana -- the huge riverboat casino in Elizabeth, Indiana. It is one of very few spots on earth with good mid-limit stud.
I had been there a few months previously and discovered, amidst the 32 tables of hold 'em, a rocking $30/60 stud game that started on Friday night and concluded some time on Monday. I had played happily on a Saturday night, finding the game loose and passive. I won about $700 in a few hours and vowed that I'd have to get myself back as soon as time and my schedule allowed. I was glad to have the excuse of the Ali Center to get me there. I was hoping that late on this Sunday night the game would still be going.
It was. It was shorthanded. I made four.
Shorthanded stud is not my favorite form of my favorite game. The strategy changes significantly, as I'll explain later. But I noticed, after watching only a few hands, that this was a great game.
There was a middle-aged local guy in the game with whom I had played and conversed during my last visit. He was a friendly, somewhat loose and passive player. He'd frequently stay in until the River. Sometimes he'd catch and win a massive pot. Other times, much more often it seemed, he'd miss and either concede or call the winner down "to keep him honest." There was also an Asian woman who was clearly on tilt, and a younger guy visiting from Oregon who was very straightforward. We used to call players like him ABC players because he played pretty much by the book. I sat down, tired at about 11:45 PM, but eager to play. That is sometimes a dangerous combination. But I had resolved to play my best game -- even if it was only for a short while. I decided that even though I had flown to Louisville with an eye on this game, if I felt tired or uneasy, I would leave. Better, I figured, than staying too long and losing a ton of money.
The structure of a full $30/60 game favors an aggressive style. Each player antes $5 with a $10 bring-in. A full table has $50 in the pot to start. This creates the ratio of initial pot to initial completed bet of 1.66:1. That is huge. Compare it to $10/20. It has $11 in the pot initially, with a ratio of pot to bet of only 1.1:1. The 1.66:1 ratio strongly favors ante steal attempts.
Even so, this was a shorthanded version of the game.
In stud, unlike in hold 'em or other games with blinds like Omaha and Draw, the initial pot size changes as the number of players change. So too must a successful player change his basic approach to the game. Players often conclude, wrongly, that they should bluff more in a short stud game. It's easy to understand why they reach this conclusion -- wrong though it is. With fewer players, it appears easier to bluff since there are fewer players to convince. But this is a serious error, as I'll explain in part two of this article.
Ashley Adams is the author of Winning 7-Card Stud, (Kensington Press 2003). He has been playing 7-Card Stud for 40 years-and profitably in casinos for the past 10 years. He has played in casinos all over the world, including England, Denmark, Sweden, Austria, Hungary, Canada and the United States, but plays most frequently at at Foxwoods Resort Casino in Ledyard Connecticut. Professionally, he is a union organizer and an agent for broadcasters.
