Stud Poker Variations:

This page describes rules of the following stud poker games: Eight-or-Better High-Low stud, Mississippi stud and Mexican stud.

Answering the request of our visitors, we post rules for three popular Stud poker games. To understand the rules of these Stud poker games, you must first learn classical Seven-card stud and Five-card stud. Visit the pages dedicated to these games before you proceed.

Mexican Stud or Shifting Sands

Mexican Stud, Mexican Poker and Stud Loco are the names for various forms of roll your own five-card stud, which is often played with a stripped deck and wild cards. Here we will describe the most classical variant of Mexican Stud, played, among others, in Casino San Pablo, Northern California: 8s, 9s, and 10s are removed from the deck, and a single joker is added, which makes a 41 cards deck, where Jacks follow 7s, so 5-6-7-J-Q makes a straight. The face-up joker plays as a bug, and a face-down joker is completely wild. A flush beats a full house. The game is played as choose-before roll your own five-card stud. The high card on the first round pays the bring-in. The game is usually played with a very high ante,

Shifting Sands is identical to Mexican Stud except the rule that turns each players hole card and all others cards of that rank to wild cards for that specific player only.

Mississippi Stud

Mississippi Stud is Seven-card Stud specially adopted for no limit and pot limit play, and therefore it is becoming more and more popular. Mississippi Stud often played using a betting structure similar to that of Texas Holdem, where fixed limit with the last two rounds double the limit of the first two and the bring-in less than the first round limit.

The first round is played identically to standard Seven-card Stud. For the second round two up-cards are dealt to each player, which makes it two down-cards and three up-cards. Unlike standard stud there is no betting on Fourth Street. Before the third round starts, each player gets one more up-cards. The last card is dealt face up, so each player ends with two down-cards and five up-cards. Five up-cards on the last round makes it possible to count straights, flushes, and full houses as high hand exposed to determine who must bet first. The seventh street bet is followed by a normal showdown.

Murrumbidgee:

An alternative version of Mississippi Stud is called Murrumbidgee. In Murrumbidgee Stud three down-cards are dealt initially instead of two while no more than two of them can be used in the final hand. Murrumbidgee stud is played with low hands, or high-low split.

Eight-or-Better High-Low Stud

Eight-or-Better High-Low Stud is also called Seven Eight and Stud Eight. Eight-or-Better High-Low Stud is the most common form of high-low split stud. The rules Eight-or-Better High-Low Stud are very similar to Seven-card stud, but the pot is split between the player with the highest hand and the player with the lowest hand with the ace-to-five low values. Winning low is possible with an 8-high hand or lower. Betting system is equal to standard high-hand stud, where if any, on the first round, and subsequent rounds start the betting with the highest showing poker hand, low card pays the bring-in. There is no declaration for high and low in the showdown. Each player chooses a different subset of five cards to play for high and low. For example, a A-K-8-5-5-3-2 hand can be played as A-K-5-5-8 high hand or 8-5-3-2-A low hand. K-9-8-7-7-6-5 can be played as the 9-high straight for high, but cannot be played as a low hand, because an 8-high or lower five-card hand can not be set. In this case, high hand takes the entire pot. This game can be played with a bug or two in the deck.