I suppose it started when one poker player or another was tired of only getting bad hands. Someone came up with the novel idea of letting the worst hand win for a change. Thus was razz born.

Razz, or more formally "razzle-dazzle" is 7-card stud played for low only. Straights and flushes don't count against you, aces are always low, and, subsequently, the best hand is the A-2-3-4-5 or "bicycle".

Stud fanciers, who once eschewed razz because of it's reputation as a gambling game, now often find themselves having to play it if they want to play stud at all – both because of the demise of regular stud games and the ascendancy of rotation games like H.O.R.S.E and dealer's choice games where razz is played. Even on line sites are getting into the act. You can now play razz on Full Tilt and Poker Stars

If you want a thorough understanding of the game there is really only one good book on the market that I know of: that's David Sklanksy's Sklansky on Poker. It was written in the 1980s to address the typical $15/30 and $30/60 games that could be found in Las Vegas at that time. It assumes that your opponents are, for the most part, at least fairly good players. By understanding all of the information in the book, about how to play on all of the streets, you will be well on your way to becoming a winning razz player in any game. I recommend the book highly.

But you don't need to read the book or learn all of the important concepts in it to beat the typical lower stakes games you can now find on-line – or to be good enough to come out ahead in the "R" round of HORSE in the typical rotation game. In general, this is because the level of play is pretty poor – not universally awful – but bad enough to beat without being an expert. While there's no shortcut to becoming a truly expert razz player, I can give you enough of the basics to help you beat most of the bad and average players that you're likely to encounter in those games or in the typical dealer's choice home game.

First, you need to understand the structure. It's pretty intuitive if you understand stud.

Each player antes. In the typical $2/4 and $3/6 game the ante is $.25. The high card has an initial forced bet. In the typical $2/4 and $3/6 game it's $1.00. That means that at a full table of eight players, the initial pot is $3.00 in both $2/4 razz and $3/6 razz.

Thereafter the stakes proceed as in regular stud. They double on fifth street and remain doubled until the river. Notice that there is no double bet option on fourth if a pair appears.

I've found that there are at least a few players in the on line games and in the rotation games I've been in who play incorrectly much of the time. In general, this is because they are too loose – calling with hands that they shouldn't be playing – and too wild, raising with hands that they should either fold or just call with. These are not the types of mistakes by opponents that the Sklansky book anticipates with his strategy. Unlike the better, higher-level player that he addresses, I've found that I do not need much deception to beat these lower stakes games. Rather, a simple and direct tight/aggressive strategy is sufficient.

For example, I play in games where there is often a player with a 9 and higher who will call the bring-in and, if he has called it, will call a completion (a "completion" is an initial raise to the lower tier of betting – raising the bring-in). So, for example, a player with a T exposed will call the $1 bring-in in a $3/6 game and if that bet is raised to $3.00 he will also call along.

Similarly, in games like this it's not uncommon for players to sometimes raise on fourth or fifth when they have the worst of it. For example, I was playing the other night and saw the following:

(xx)J69
(xx)87T

The fairly tight/aggressive player with the T low bet (as he should if he has two unpaired low cards in the hole) and the J high raised. There is no good reason for the Jack to raise. It is an awful play. He probably has both the worse hand and the worse draw.

Similarly, I saw the following in a $2/4 game on PokerStars:

(xx)AT2K
(xx)4577

The King low bet, the pair of 7s raised and the King reraised! He should not have initiated the betting even with a smooth T. And when he was raised he should have thrown his hand away.

Against players like this a conservative strategy is the best. Don't worry about bluffing or semi-bluffing (with very few exceptions that I'll mention later). Don't worry about close calls. Wait until you are clearly in the lead and then bet and raise as much as you can. Get their money in when you are clearly getting the best of it and you'll win their money. Simple as that. In my next few articles I'll show you how to do that in razz.

(By the way, as it turned out in the first example, the player with the Jack exposed another Jack when he lost the hand. Guess he thought he was establishing a wild and crazy image. The player in the other hand had a 3 and 6 in the hole to start and caught a 5 for A2567 to win the hand and a monster pot. This proves the rule that bad players don't always lose every hand. Which is a good thing for those of us who play better. By the end of the night he went bust, losing the $170 he had when I joined the game.)

Ed Note: You can play Razz at either Full Tilt, or Poker Stars, both of whom welcome U.S. players.

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