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"Shallow men believe in luck.
Strong men believe in cause and effect."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Seven Card Stud High-Low Split is one of the more mechanical poker games, but it tends to bedevil most players, particularly in a
tournament structure.
Tournament fields break down into several player group/types. One group consists of the regular professional tournament players who
play all games. In general, a great skill they have is to play within the limited bankroll structure of tournaments. Another group are
specialists, players who excel at one game, in whatever format, be it ring games or tournaments, who normally play almost all the
tournaments in their specialty but almost no others.
The most common group fitting fits this latter definition are Los Angeles
Lowball players. There are still a smattering a
Lowball ring games around, but every Lowball tournament brings out about three or four dozen fine tournament Lowball players who
either play very few other tournaments, or none at all. Ten years ago Lowball tournaments were some of the juiciest, dead-money events
available, mostly because normal ring game lowball players are simply awful tournament players. The skills don't translate at all.
Drawing to eights and drawing two leads to the rail pretty quickly. These days however those draw-to-eights players are nearly
extinct, and we are left with only all the best-adapted Lowball specialists entering. Consequently, Lowball tournaments aren't nearly
the pillow-y soft events they used to be.
"Game players" make up another group. One simple way to describe them is to say they are non-specialists who think they are
specialists. They play ring games in a
particular game reasonably well, even excellently, but they simply have almost no tournament skills.
Limit Holdem tournaments have the most of these type players, but the high level of short-term random luck in Holdem gives these
players a decent shot. In Seven Card Stud8 tournaments on the other hand, game players are as dead meat as meat can get. No game
fundamentally changes its complexion more between
ring games and tournaments, and during tournaments
themselves, than Stud8. Game players who say "I play the same always" might as well just mail in their money. They need the
intervention of the hand of God and an Uzi to be the last person standing in a Stud8 event.
 In Stud8 ring
games, the focus is on making strong scooping low hands. Those are the hands that are bettable, that can semi-bluff out mediocre high
hands on fifth and sixth street, can often freeroll during multiway betting, and that when they miss you are left with nothing at all
and don't end up losing extra bets on the final betting round (whereas they always get the extra bet when they win). I won't go into
Stud8 ring game strategy here, but to oversimplify it, you play hands with low cards.
This basic ring game strategy also happens to be how you should approach the first round of a Stud8 tournament (perhaps two rounds
depending on the chips you get). But after you get past the first or second round, everything changes -- unless you have
managed to build up a lot of chips in the first round by making one or two big, scooping hands. If you have built up your chips, if
you have a deep bankroll similar to what you would have in a ring game, then you can continue to play speculative hands that can scoop
huge pots. But if you haven't accumulated chips via scooping one or more multiway pots early, you must completely change how you play
Stud8.
In later stages of a Stud8 tournament, any player showing an ace up will normally make a move at the pot and will usually get away
with it. Aside from not screwing up in these situations, the way to play Stud8 tournaments in later rounds is: play high cards. Game
players very often reach the later stages of Stud8 events and crash on the rocks of something like 345, a very playable hand in a ring
game, but pure sucker's meat when you only have enough chips to play one or two hands all the way to the end... and will normally be
head-up in whatever hand you play. (If you have the bring-in with 345, and someone completes it to a full bet, then calling the
complete will usually be right.)
All High-Low split poker is fundamentally about winning the high portion of the pot -- ideally by scooping the pot. Stud8 has many
betting rounds. Speculative hands love getting multiway odds, but they hate having to call bets all the way to the last card, and then
being all-in when they either make or miss their hand. Split Kings are a miserable starting hand in Stud8 ring games. Split Kings are
the road to victory at the end of Stud8 tournaments. The game gets turned completely on its head.
As I've said before, adapt or die. Stud8 tournaments are the adapters heaven, and the rigid-bots nightmare. There are rare times when
low cards should be played late -- cards are live, multiple high hands in the pot, good
position, etc. But usually: play low cards early; play
high cards late.
For more see
Tournament Poker Strategy including
HORSE Tournament Strategy,
Tournament End Games and also
Seven Card Stud Rules
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