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Most card players spend their lives chasing aces, flushes, and full houses. Razz inverts that logic entirely. In this seven-card stud variant, the worst traditional poker hand is the best possible Razz hand, and the player holding the lowest combination of cards at showdown takes the pot. That single reversal of fortune changes almost every instinct a conventional poker player has developed, which is part of what makes Razz so absorbing once you understand it. Here is a complete breakdown of how the game works, what the hand rankings mean, and how the betting structure operates.
Razz is a lowball form of seven-card stud poker. It is played with a standard 52-card deck and accommodates between two and eight players. There are no community cards and no flop; instead, each player receives their own private cards across multiple dealing rounds. The objective is to make the lowest possible five-card hand from the seven cards you are dealt.
Straights and flushes do not count against you in Razz. This is a crucial distinction from some other lowball formats. The ace is always treated as the lowest possible card. That means the best hand in Razz — the absolute nuts — is A-2-3-4-5, commonly called a wheel or bicycle. If you are sitting on a wheel at showdown, you cannot be beaten.
Understanding that suits are irrelevant and that straights do not hurt you frees you from a lot of anxiety when reading your hand. Your only concern is raw card values, and lower is always better.
Razz uses antes rather than blinds. Before any cards are dealt, every player at the table posts a small mandatory ante, which seeds the pot. The size of the ante is determined by the table's stakes.
Once antes are posted, the dealer distributes two cards face-down to each player — these are called hole cards — and one card face-up. The face-up card is the door card, and it is visible to everyone at the table from the very start.
Here is where Razz differs sharply from standard stud: the player showing the highest door card is forced to post the bring-in bet. In regular stud, the lowest card brings it in; in Razz, because high cards are bad, the player with the worst showing card starts the action. If two players share the same card rank, suit determines the higher card, ranked in alphabetical order: clubs, diamonds, hearts, spades. A player showing the king of spades, for instance, would bring it in before a player showing the king of hearts.
The bring-in player must either post the bring-in (a mandatory smaller bet) or complete the bet to the full small bet amount. Action then proceeds clockwise from there.
Razz is built around betting rounds known as streets. Each street corresponds to a new card being dealt, and the betting structure shifts as the hand develops.
Third Street is the initial round described above — two hole cards and one door card, with the bring-in triggering the action. Bets on third street are at the lower limit.
Fourth Street sees each remaining player receive a second face-up card. Now, unlike in the bring-in situation, the player showing the lowest two-card combination acts first. This applies from fourth street onwards through the rest of the hand. Bets on fourth street remain at the lower limit.
Fifth Street brings a third face-up card to each player. From this point onwards, bets move to the higher limit. If you are playing a £4/£8 fixed-limit game, for example, all bets and raises from fifth street to the end are £8.
Sixth Street adds a fourth face-up card. Each player now has two hole cards and four board cards showing — a significant amount of information for everyone to read.
Seventh Street, also called the river, delivers the final card face-down. This card is private. After the final betting round, any remaining players proceed to showdown.
Throughout every street, the maximum number of raises in a single betting round is typically capped at four: one bet and three raises. Once the cap is reached, players can only call or fold until the next street begins.
Reading Razz hands trips up newcomers more than any other aspect of the game. The method is straightforward once you know the system: you evaluate your best five cards by starting from the highest card in the hand and working downward.
Compare two hands: 8-6-4-3-A versus 9-5-4-2-A. The first hand's highest card is an 8; the second hand's highest card is a 9. Because lower is better, the 8-high hand wins. If two hands share the same highest card, you compare the next card down, and so on.
Common shorthand describes Razz hands by their highest card first. "Eight-low" means your best five cards top out at an 8. The lower the number, the stronger the hand. A seven-low beats an eight-low; a six-low beats a seven-low. The wheel (A-2-3-4-5) is a five-low — the lowest hand possible.
Here is how some sample hands stack up from best to worst:
Notice that pairs, trips, and other made hands count against you in Razz — paired cards cannot be used to improve your low; you must use five unpaired cards to make your best hand. If your seven cards contain only one possible five-card combination with a pair, that is what you play, and it will usually lose to any legitimate low hand.
One of the great pleasures of Razz — and one of its sharpest strategic edges — is how much information the board cards reveal. With multiple up-cards visible for every player, you can deduce the likelihood of opponents completing strong low hands. If you see three other players already showing 3s among their board cards, the chance that you will pick up a 3 on a future street is meaningfully reduced.
Players exploring card games at new online casinos will sometimes encounter Razz as part of a mixed-game rotation, where it appears alongside Hold'em, Omaha, and other formats in games like HORSE. In that context, being able to read board cards accurately becomes even more valuable, since opponents from other poker disciplines may not have fine-tuned their Razz reads yet.
Tracking which cards are dead — cards that have been folded and are no longer available in the deck — is not just helpful in Razz, it is essential. A player with three low cards in their starting hand should be far more cautious if several of the cards they need to complete a strong low are already visible on other players' boards.
Solid Razz strategy begins before the first bet is completed. The quality of your three-card starting hand determines how often you should continue past third street.
The strongest starting hands contain three unpaired cards all ranked eight or below. Three cards to a wheel — such as A-2-5 or A-3-4 — are premium holdings. Three cards of eight or below with two of them being an ace and a deuce give you enormous potential.
Hands with a pair on third street are playable only in specific circumstances: generally when the pair is very low (a pair of aces or twos) and the kicker is strong, or when you have enough information from the board that opponents appear to be in even worse shape.
Starting hands with any card ranked nine or higher should usually be mucked, particularly in full games. A nine on third street means you begin the hand already in trouble; drawing to replace that nine while maintaining a low hand is an uphill task when other players begin with cleaner holdings.
Because board cards are visible, bluffing in Razz is tightly connected to what your up-cards represent. A player showing three small cards — say, A-3-5 on their first three streets — has a threatening board even if their hole cards are poor. Betting aggressively into that board puts real pressure on opponents who are drawing to marginal hands.
Conversely, if your board is showing an eight and two tens, betting into a player who shows three cards under five is an act of optimism rather than strategy. Razz rewards players who pay close attention to both their own holdings and the story their visible cards tell to the rest of the table.
Scooping the pot with a bluff when your door cards happen to be small is a legitimate weapon, but it works best in position and against opponents who are genuinely capable of folding when the board tells a credible story.
Forgetting that pairs are harmful is the most frequent error among newcomers. Players accustomed to hold'em celebrate a pair of aces; in Razz, that same pair is a liability. Staying in a hand with two pairs hoping for some kind of redemption burns chips fast.
A second common mistake is failing to fold when your board deteriorates. If you started with three beautiful low cards and your next two streets produce paint, continuing to invest in a hand that is now almost certainly losing ground is a leak that compounds quickly at fixed-limit stakes.
Finally, neglecting dead-card awareness undermines otherwise solid decision-making. Before calling or raising on any street, take a moment to count how many of the cards you need are still available in the undealt deck. Razz rewards patience and observation far more than optimistic chasing.
Razz strips poker down to a form of structured logic that is refreshingly different from the high-card heroics most players are used to. It rewards discipline, memory, and the ability to read an opponent's board accurately over several streets. The reversed hand rankings take a little time to absorb, but once they become instinctive, the game opens up into something genuinely strategic. Whether you encounter it as a standalone cash game, a tournament format, or one leg of a HORSE rotation, understanding how Razz works gives you a meaningful edge over players who have never taken the time to learn the low side of poker.
