Poker Strategies
After receiving pocket cards, you are immediately faced with a choice: play your cards and either raise or call the blinds, or fold.
After receiving pocket cards, you are immediately faced with a choice: play your cards and either raise or call the blinds, or fold.
A curious feature of Razz as played in Nevada is that the high upcard has to bet first in each betting interval. This means a player is throwing $3, $10, $20, $30, $100 into the pot, depending on the game limits, on a king, queen or jack. Normally someone showing a low upcard is going to raise the opening bet, and the opener usually throws in his hand without further play. After the first betting interval the best low hand starts each of the succeeding betting intervals.
This game is a much easier game to play strategically than Seven Card Stud High because here we're concerned with low cards only, whereas in Seven Card Stud High, those hole cards can hide all kinds of big, strong hands. I wholeheartedly agree with Joey Hawthorne, one of America's best Lowball experts, who remarked that Razz contained 95% luck and only 5% skill.