Poker Variants: Omaha, Stud, Razz, HORSE Explained

Texas Hold'em is just one of many poker forms. Here's each variant, how it plays, and why some live on TV and others stayed at home.When someone says "poker" with no qualifier, they almost always mean Texas Hold'em. It's the variant you see on TV, in films, and at most home games. But poker is actually a whole family of games sharing a few basic principles — betting in rounds, comparable hands, the option to fold — that differ widely in the details. Some were kings fifty years ago and almost nobody plays them today; others are professional niches you'll only see in high-stakes tournaments; and a couple are little gems worth knowing about so your home game doesn't stale on Hold'em alone. I'll go through the ones that really matter. I'm not pretending to teach you how to master them — each would fill a book — but to leave you knowing what's what when somebody mentions one. Some you'll want to try; others you'll just want to recognise. Texas Hold'em: the king Starting with the most familiar so it can serve as a baseline. In Texas Hold'em each player receives two hole cards and shares five community cards in the centre of the table. They form their best five-card hand out of the seven available. Four betting rounds: preflop, flop, turn, river. The whole thing is laid out in how to play Texas Hold'em. It's the dominant worldwide variant since the early 2000s, when the televised "poker boom" (Chris Moneymaker winning the 2003 WSOP through an online satellite) catapulted Hold'em into pop culture. Before Hold'em, what you saw in casinos was Stud. After 2003, almost everything is Hold'em. The reason is simple: with two hole cards and five visible to everyone, it's the easiest format to follow as a spectator and the quickest one for a beginner to pick up. Omaha Hold'em: four cards and one weird rule From the outside Omaha looks like Texas Hold'em: five community cards, same four betting rounds, same flow. The key difference: each player is dealt four hole cards instead of two. And there's a rule that takes some getting used to: Your final hand must use exactly two of your four hole cards and exactly three of the five community cards. No more, no less. This is very different from Hold'em, where you can use whatever you want. In Omaha, if you hold A♥ K♠ J♣ 2♦ and the board is A♦ K♥ Q♥ J♥ 10♥, you don't have a heart flush — even with four hearts on the board and one in your hand — because you only have one heart in your hand and the rule demands exactly two. And you don't have the royal flush either, for the same reason: your A♥ and K♠ force you to pick exactly two of yours and three of the board, and between your A♥ + K♠ and three of the community cards you can't complete the royal flush. It takes a beat to click: you have to think "which two of mine do I pick", not "what five cards add up to the best hand". Omaha is almost always played as Pot-Limit (bets can never exceed the size of the pot at any given moment). It's known as PLO ("Pot Limit Omaha") and it's the second-most-played variant worldwide, especially in online cash games and high-stakes casino tables. It's famous for having much bigger pots than Hold'em: because each player has four cards, made hands and draws are more frequent and stronger, which encourages bigger betting. The result: if you sit at a PLO game without preparation, it's easy to get into trouble. Hands that crush in Hold'em (a single set, for example) are middling in Omaha and often lose to opponents with a flush draw and a straight draw at the same time. Omaha Hi-Lo (Split Pot 8 or better) Omaha variant where the pot is split between the best high hand and the best low hand, provided the low qualifies as "eight or better": all five cards must be different ranks and all eight or below (with the ace counting as 1). The best possible low hand is 5-4-3-2-A. If no one qualifies for the low, the high winner takes the entire pot. It's one of the most complex poker variants because you're thinking about two hands at once. It forms part of the mixed HORSE format, which we'll cover below. Seven-Card Stud: the king before Hold'em For decades, Seven-Card Stud was what most people meant by "poker". Until the 80s and 90s it was the dominant variant in American casinos and the WSOP's flagship format. Today it's played far less, but it's still a hallmark of old-school players and forms part of the professional mixed formats. How a hand runs: No community cards. Each player gets their own seven cards. Before the deal, everyone posts an ante (small forced bet). Three cards are dealt to each: two face down, one face up. The player with the lowest visible upcard pays the bring-in (forced opening bet). More face-up cards are dealt on subsequent streets (fourth, fifth and sixth), with a betting round between each. The seventh and final card is dealt face down. Each player ends with three hole cards and four upcards. Best five-card hand wins out of those seven. The biggest difference from Hold'em is that Stud is a memory and observation game: most of each player's cards are face up. Knowing what's been dealt — and what's "live" for the opponent — is crucial information. That's why experienced Stud players love it: less raw luck, more technical reading. But it's slow to follow as a spectator, which is why TV dropped it for Hold'em the moment Hold'em emerged. Seven-Card Stud Hi-Lo Like regular Stud but with the pot split between high and low hands (8 or better, like Omaha Hi-Lo). It forms the "E" in HORSE. Razz: the poker where low wins Razz is an inverted Seven-Card Stud: the lowest hand wins, not the highest. And it has one curious detail that sets it apart: in Razz, straights and flushes don't count toward your low hand, and the ace always plays as 1 (the lowest). That means the best possible hand is A-2-3-4-5, which in standard poker would be a straight (the "wheel"), but here it's just a 5-low — the strongest. Any pair destroys your hand: two fours, for instance, sends you way up the rankings. The starting strategy is fairly clear: you only want to play three cards that are all different ranks and ideally all 8 or below. The best starting combination is A-2-3. Razz is probably the variant that frustrates Hold'em converts the most, because you have to retrain your brain: what's good here is what's normally bad elsewhere. That's exactly why it's seen as a skill marker: good Razz players are usually good poker players in general, because the game demands a lot of discipline and constant attention to what's visible on the opponent. Five-Card Draw: the original poker Five-Card Draw is probably the oldest version of poker as we know it, the base on which everything else was built. It's also the simplest format and the one you most likely played as a kid at home with family, although the household Spanish variants tend to have a thousand mongrel rules. How it goes: Each player is dealt five face-down cards at the start. First betting round. Each player can discard as many cards as they want (between 0 and 5) and receive new ones from the deck. Second betting round. Showdown. It's the quickest poker and, by most serious players' assessment, the least strategically interesting because information is very limited: each player hides their whole hand, you only see how many cards they swap. The Hold'em and Stud booms left it nearly extinct in casinos and tournaments. Today it survives in home games and as the base for casino-style video poker. If someone proposes it for a night with friends, it's perfect for teaching someone who's never touched cards: the rules are so simple that in five minutes anybody can play. HORSE: the mixed format that filters players HORSE isn't a variant in itself, but a format that combines five variants rotating through the game. The acronym comes from the initials: H — Texas Hold'em O — Omaha Hi-Lo Split (8 or better) R — Razz S — Seven-Card Stud E — Seven-Card Stud Eight-or-better (Hi-Lo) In a HORSE tournament, the variant changes every certain number of hands. You start playing Hold'em, after a while (say, a full orbit of the table or a fixed number of hands) you switch to Omaha Hi-Lo, then to Razz, and so on. The idea is to reward the complete player: it's not enough to be a Hold'em monster, you have to defend yourself across all five. The WSOP has hosted a HORSE championship with a $50,000 buy-in since 2006, considered one of the most prestigious events by professionals precisely because it filters out the one-variant specialists. There are also smaller versions (HORS, HOSE) and bigger ones (HORSEL adds Lowball Triple Draw, mixed games with no-limit hold'em added at the end), but classic HORSE is the reference. Short-Deck (6+ Hold'em): the Asian rarity that went global Short-Deck, also called 6+ Hold'em, is a modern Hold'em variant that emerged in the private high-stakes games of Macao, Hong Kong and Manila around 2014. Pros like Phil Ivey and Tom Dwan popularised it in online videos in 2015, and since 2018 it has had televised tournaments (Triton Series) with multimillion-dollar buy-ins. The concept is very simple: All 2s, 3s, 4s and 5s are removed from the deck: 16 cards out. That leaves 36 cards in play (6 through Ace, in four suits). The rest is standard Hold'em. With fewer cards, made hands appear more often and, more importantly, probabilities shift. That's why the hand rankings adjust: A flush beats a full house. It's rarer with a reduced deck. A three of a kind usually beats a straight (some houses apply this, some don't). The low straight with ace is A-6-7-8-9 (because 5, 4, 3 and 2 don't exist). The result is a faster and much more volatile Hold'em. Pots build quickly, decisions are riskier, and that's exactly why it's the preferred variant of millionaire pros looking for real action at small tables. It's not good for beginners: standard Hold'em intuitions don't hold up here. Less common variants worth knowing exist Five-Card Stud The grandfather of Seven-Card Stud. Each player gets five cards: one face down and four face up, with betting between each. Practically extinct, but part of the history. Pineapple and Crazy Pineapple Texas Hold'em variants where each player is dealt three hole cards and must discard one at some point (at the start in Pineapple, after the flop in Crazy Pineapple). More fluid than PLO, more action than Hold'em. Seen in private games and the occasional niche tournament. Chinese Poker (Open-Face) A very different variant: each player gets 13 cards and arranges them into three hands (of 3, 5 and 5 cards) that must be in order of strength. No betting rounds, you compare each hand and points are distributed. Very popular in private Asian games and among pros as a break from Hold'em. Lowball and Deuce-to-Seven Family of "low" variants: lowest hand wins, with different rules on whether aces play high or low and whether straights/flushes count. Deuce-to-Seven (2-7) is the toughest lowball because aces always play high (best hand is 7-5-4-3-2) and straights/flushes do count against you. Badugi Korean variant of the draw family. Each player gets four cards and forms hands of up to four cards, one of each suit and all different ranks. Lowest hand wins. Strange, fun, very specific. Which one to play, based on what you want If you want to…Recommended variant Learn from scratchTexas Hold'em (easiest to explain) or Five-Card Draw (quickest) Have a fun night with friendsTexas Hold'em, alternating with Five-Card Draw or Crazy Pineapple for variety More strategic depth with same basic rulesPot-Limit Omaha (PLO) Step outside Hold'em without too much hassleSeven-Card Stud Try something radically differentRazz (low wins) or Chinese Poker (you build three hands) Test yourself as a complete playerHORSE Quick action at small tablesShort-Deck (6+ Hold'em) Frequently asked questions What's the most played poker variant in the world? Texas Hold'em, by a wide margin. It's been the dominant variant in pro tournaments, online play, casino tables and home games since the early 2000s. The second most played is Pot-Limit Omaha (PLO), especially in high-stakes cash games. How does Omaha differ from Texas Hold'em? In Omaha each player gets four hole cards instead of two, and must use exactly two of them plus exactly three of the five community cards to form their final hand. In Hold'em you can use whatever you want. That rule changes the whole strategy. What is Razz? A Seven-Card Stud variant where the lowest hand wins. Straights and flushes don't count against your low and the ace plays as 1. The best possible hand is A-2-3-4-5 ("the wheel"). Any pair hurts you. What does HORSE mean in poker? It's a mixed format combining five variants that rotate through play: Hold'em, Omaha Hi-Lo, Razz, Stud and Stud Hi-Lo. It's considered the toughest test for a pro because it requires mastering several distinct systems. The WSOP has had a $50,000 buy-in HORSE championship since 2006. What is Short-Deck or 6+ Hold'em? It's Texas Hold'em but with all 2s through 5s removed from the deck: 36 cards left. Made hands appear more often, so the ranking adjusts (a flush beats a full house, for example). It emerged in private Asian games around 2014 and has been on TV tournaments since 2018. What's the oldest variant? Five-Card Draw is probably the oldest form of poker as we know it, the base for video poker and home poker. It's considered the "father" of the other variants. Studs appeared mid-19th century and Hold'ems early 20th (modern Texas Hold'em became popular in Texas in the 60s and went global in the 80s). Are there poker variants played with Spanish decks? No. Poker is a French-suited 52-card game. If you want to play with a Spanish deck, there are tons of traditional Spanish games (mus, brisca, tute) but they're not poker. To understand the difference between deck systems, see types of playing cards. Bringing it to the table Knowing several variants opens up the game in a way you can't appreciate until you try it. A poker night at home that alternates rounds of Texas Hold'em with Five-Card Draw and, if players have experience, one of PLO, is much more entertaining than playing the same thing all night. If you want to host one of those, it's all in how to host a poker night at home: kit, chips, blinds, everything. For almost any variant covered here — except the rare ones, like Chinese Poker or Badugi — a standard poker deck serves you. But it's worth having a couple in rotation if you'll be playing many hands: Stud and Razz, for instance, handle the cards a lot because everyone's flipping them. A Bicycle Standard or a Tally-Ho are the two classic references and you'll find them at any serious table. Our selection of poker decks has everything we'd recommend to a friend who's starting out, and if you want to know why some brands are preferred to others, it's in Bicycle vs Theory11 vs Tally-Ho. If what tempts you now is deeper theory, the logical next steps are: understanding why table position matters so much, drilling the poker hand rankings until it's automatic, and starting to calculate pot odds before every decision.

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	xxs	xs	s	m	l	xl	2xl
US Size	0-0	2-4	4-6	8-10	12-14	16-18	20-22
Bust (in)	30-32	32-34	34-36	36-38	38-40	40-42.5	42.5-45.5
Under Bust (in)	25-26	27-28	28-29	30-31.5	32-33.5	34-36	36-38
Waist (in)	23.5-24.5	25-26.5	27-28.5	29-30.5	31-33.5	34-36.5	37-40

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