Poker variants: Omaha, Stud, Razz, HORSE and all the others

Poker variants: far more than Texas Hold'em

When somebody says "let's play poker" and leaves it at that, they are almost always thinking of Texas Hold'em. It is the variant you see on television, in films and in most home games. But poker is really a whole family of games that share a handful of basic principles —betting in rounds, hands you can compare, the option to fold when the spot does not look good— and that in the details play out in very different ways.

Some variants were royalty half a century ago and today almost nobody touches them; others are professional niches you will only see at high-stakes tournaments; and a couple are small gems worth knowing so you can mix things up in a game with friends instead of grinding the same old Hold'em forever. We are going to go through them one by one, taking our time. The idea is not that you walk away an expert in Razz or Omaha Hi-Lo —each one would fill a book— but that you know what each thing is when somebody mentions it and can decide whether you fancy trying it.

If you still have doubts about the basic mechanics of poker or about the ranking of hands, it is better to start with how to play Texas Hold'em and with poker hands and their ranking. Once that is second nature, everything that follows here makes far more sense.

The poker family: four big branches

Before we get into specific variants, it helps to have a map. Although the list of games called "poker" is enormously long, almost all of them can be grouped into four big families according to how the cards are dealt and revealed:

• Community card poker: each player receives some private cards face down and there are cards in the middle of the table that serve everybody. Texas Hold'em, Omaha and their offshoots fall here. This is the family that dominates modern poker.
• Stud: there are no community cards. Each player is dealt their own cards, some face down and some face up. Seven-Card Stud and Razz are the benchmarks.
• Draw: each player receives a closed hand and has the chance to swap cards for others from the deck. Five-Card Draw is the classic; Deuce-to-Seven Triple Draw and Badugi are modern relatives.
• Straight: the most primitive form. A single closed hand, one betting round, showdown. Practically extinct in serious card rooms, but it is the ancestor all the rest came from.

Each branch stretches further with hi-lo formats (where the pot is split between the best high hand and the best low hand) and with lowball formats (where the lowest hand simply wins). That combination is what pushes the real number of possible games up to something almost impossible to cover.

Texas Hold'em: the undisputed king

I will start with the best known one so it works as the reference against which to compare the rest. In Texas Hold'em each player receives two cards face down and shares five community cards that are turned over in the middle of the table. With those seven cards —two of their own, five community— everyone makes their best five-card hand. There are four betting rounds: preflop (before anything is revealed), flop (after three community cards are turned over), turn (fourth community card) and river (fifth and last).

Hold'em traces back to the early twentieth century in a small Texas town called Robstown, though there is no precise documentation of who invented it. It reached Las Vegas in 1963 at the California Club and, somewhat by chance, became the headline game of the World Series of Poker when that tournament started in 1970 at Binion's Horseshoe. For decades it was a relatively niche game, dominated by professionals who preferred smoky rooms and ashtrays to television flashbulbs.

The turning point came in 2003, when an amateur accountant named Chris Moneymaker, who had qualified online through a $39 satellite, won the WSOP and took home $2.5 million. The televised scene —with the "hole card" cameras that let viewers see the face-down cards from underneath the table— did the rest. Before 2003 what you saw in casinos was, above all, Stud. After 2003, almost everything is Hold'em. The practical reason is twofold: with two cards face down and five visible to everybody, it is the format that is easiest to follow as a spectator and the quickest to learn as a beginner.

It is played in three formats depending on how the betting is regulated: Limit Hold'em (fixed bets), Pot-Limit Hold'em (you can never bet more than what is in the pot) and No-Limit Hold'em (you can push all your chips in whenever you like). No-Limit is the king of televised tournaments; Limit is the one many old-school players still prefer because it is strategically more "pure".

Omaha Hold'em: four cards and one rule that trips people up

Omaha looks like Texas Hold'em from the outside: five community cards, the same four betting rounds, the same general flow. The key difference is that instead of two cards face down, each player is dealt four. And there is one rule that tends to cause headaches at first:

Your final hand must use exactly two of your four face-down cards and exactly three of the five community cards. No more, no fewer.

This is very different from Hold'em, where you can use whichever ones you like: if in Hold'em the five cards in the middle make a straight flush all by themselves, that straight flush counts for you without touching your two hole cards. In Omaha that does not work. If you hold A♥ K♠ J♣ 2♦ and the board is A♦ K♥ Q♥ J♥ 10♥, you do not have a heart flush —even though there are four hearts on the board and one heart in your hand— because you only have one heart among your cards and the rule demands exactly two. And you do not have the royal flush either, for the same reason: your two compulsory cards do not combine with any three of the community cards to complete it.

It takes a while to get the hang of it: you have to think "which two of mine do I pick" and "which three from the board do I pick", not "which five are best overall". The first time you play Omaha coming from Hold'em it is normal to believe you have a flush and discover at showdown that you do not. It happens to everybody.

Pot-Limit Omaha (PLO)

Omaha is almost always played in Pot-Limit format: bets cannot exceed the size of the pot at any given moment. It is called PLO. It is the second most played variant in the world, above all in online games and at casino cash tables. It is famous for generating much bigger pots than Hold'em, and that is no accident: since each player starts with four cards, the possible combinations are far more numerous and made hands come up frequently. That encourages heavy betting and makes pots grow quickly.

If you sit down at a PLO table for the first time having always played Hold'em, it is very easy to get yourself into trouble: hands that are monsters in Hold'em —a set, for example— are middling in Omaha and often lose to somebody who had a flush draw and a straight draw at the same time. Serious PLO players tend to say that "in Omaha you play for the nuts": to win genuinely big pots you almost always need the best possible hand or something very close to it.

Omaha Hi-Lo (Split Pot 8 or better)

A variant of Omaha in which the pot is split between the best high hand and the best low hand, provided the low "qualifies": the five cards of the low hand must all be different and all equal to or lower than 8 (with the ace counting as 1). The lowest possible low hand is 5-4-3-2-A. If nobody has a qualifying low hand, the player with the best high hand takes the whole pot.

It is one of the most complex variants in poker because you have to think about two hands at once. A card in your hand may help your high draw but hurt your low one, and vice versa. It is part of the mixed HORSE format we will look at later and it is common at high-level mixed poker tables. The general strategy says: draws that go for both halves at once (the scoop hands) are the most profitable. Any hand that can only win one half has to be valued downwards.

Big O and Courchevel

Two lesser cousins of Omaha that you will run into occasionally. Big O is Omaha Hi-Lo but with five cards face down per player instead of four, very popular in home games in the southern United States. Courchevel is Omaha with five face-down cards and with the first community card revealed before the preflop, which gives more information in the first betting round. Neither one shows up at big tournaments, but knowing they exist saves you from getting lost if somebody proposes them at a private table.

Seven-Card Stud: the king before Hold'em

For decades, Seven-Card Stud was what people understood by "poker" in the United States. Well into the 1980s and 1990s it was the dominant variant in American casinos and the main format at the WSOP. Today it is played far less, but it remains the calling card of old-school players and it is part of the professional mixed formats, so knowing it is not optional if you are seriously interested in poker.

How a hand of Stud goes:

1. There are no community cards. Each player receives their own seven cards over the course of the hand.
2. Before the deal, everybody pays an ante (a small compulsory bet).
3. Three cards are dealt to each player: two face down and one face up. That face-up card is called the door card.
4. The player with the lowest exposed card pays the bring-in (the compulsory opening bet). Ties are settled by suit.
5. More cards are dealt face up on successive "streets" (fourth street, fifth street, sixth street), with a betting round between each one.
6. The seventh and last card is dealt face down (seventh street or river).
7. Each player ends up with three cards face down and four face up. They make their best five-card hand out of those seven.

The most important difference from Hold'em is that Stud is a game of memory and observation: a large share of every player's cards are on display. Knowing what has been dealt —and what is still live in the deck for your opponent— is crucial information. That is why veterans love it so much: there is less raw luck and more technical reading. But it is slow to follow as a spectator, which explains why television abandoned it for Hold'em the moment the latter took off.

It is almost always played in Fixed Limit format: bets and raises of a predefined size on each street. The sizes double from fifth street onwards, to force the action in the closing part of the hand.

Seven-Card Stud Hi-Lo (Stud/8)

Like regular Stud, but with the pot split between the high hand and the low hand (8 or better, just as in Omaha Hi-Lo). It is the "E" in the HORSE acronym. It is also played in Limit format and has a reputation for being demanding even for well-rounded players: the visible information forces you to read opponents constantly and the double hand multiplies the decisions.

Razz: poker in reverse, where low wins

Razz is Seven-Card Stud turned upside down. The cards are dealt exactly the same way —three at the start, then four more one at a time with betting rounds in between— but the lowest hand wins, not the highest. And there is a very curious detail that makes it particular: in Razz, straights and flushes do not count against your low hand, and the ace is always worth 1.

That means the best possible hand is A-2-3-4-5, which in standard poker would be a straight (the wheel, also known as the bicycle), but here is just a low hand of "5", the best one. Any pair wrecks your hand: two fours, for instance, push you way up because your best five-card hand already includes at least that pair. Starting strategy is fairly clear: you only want to come in with three cards that are all different and, if possible, all equal to or lower than 8. The best starting combination is A-2-3.

Razz is probably the poker variant that most frustrates anyone arriving from Hold'em, because you have to retrain your head: what is good here is what is normally bad there. But that is precisely why it is a badge of skill: good Razz players tend to be good players in general, because the game demands a lot of discipline, never losing sight of what your opponent has showing and knowing when to "break" a hand that has gone wrong on the later streets.

Another quirk: in Razz, the bring-in is paid by the player with the highest exposed card, not the lowest. That is what happens in a game played in reverse.

Five-Card Draw: the poker everybody grew up with

Five-Card Draw is probably the oldest version of poker as we know it today, and the base on which everything else was built. It is also the simplest format, and the one you most likely played as a child at home with your family —although the home version is usually full of hybrid house rules that appear nowhere in the official rulebook.

How it goes:

1. Each player is dealt five cards face down to start.
2. First betting round.
3. Each player may discard as many cards as they wish (between 0 and 5) and receive new ones from the deck. This is the "draw" that gives the game its name.
4. Second betting round.
5. Showdown.

It is the fastest poker and, according to most serious players, the least interesting strategically in cash games because the information is very limited: every player hides their whole hand, all you see is how many cards they ask for. The Hold'em and Stud boom left it practically extinct in casinos and tournaments. Today it survives in home games and as the basis of video poker machines.

That said: for teaching the game to somebody who has never touched a deck, it is perfect. The rules are so simple that anyone can be playing in five minutes. If it gets proposed on an evening with friends, or if you need to explain the ranking of hands to a beginner at the table, opening with a few rounds of Five-Card Draw is usually a much better idea than diving straight into Hold'em.

HORSE: the mixed format that separates all-rounders from specialists

HORSE is not a variant in itself, but a format that combines five variants that rotate. The acronym is read off the initials:

• H — Texas Hold'em (Limit).
• 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 so many hands (typically a full orbit of the table, or a fixed amount of time). You start playing Hold'em, after a while you move to Omaha Hi-Lo, then to Razz, and so on. The idea is to reward the complete player: being a phenomenon at Hold'em is not enough, you have to hold your own in all of them.

The WSOP added HORSE in 2002 with a $2,000 buy-in —John Hennigan won it for $117,320—. In 2006 the $50,000 HORSE Championship was created, considered by the professionals themselves one of the most prestigious tournaments precisely because it filters out single-variant specialists. Chip Reese won it that year for $1.7 million. When Reese died in 2007, the WSOP established the Chip Reese Memorial Trophy for the annual winner, a nod to what that tournament represents within the trade.

There are cut-down versions of the format —HOSE drops the Razz, HORS drops the Stud Hi-Lo—, and expanded ones too: HORSEL adds Lowball Triple Draw, 8-Game Mix throws in No-Limit Hold'em and 2-7 Triple Draw as well. But classic HORSE is still the benchmark.

Short-Deck (6+ Hold'em): the Asian oddity that made it big

Short-Deck, also called 6+ Hold'em, is a modern Hold'em variant that appeared in the high-stakes private games of Macau, Hong Kong and Manila around 2014. Professionals such as Phil Ivey and Tom Dwan popularised it with online videos in 2015, and since 2018 it has had televised tournaments within the Triton Poker Series with buy-ins in the hundreds of thousands. Ivey took the first official Triton Short-Deck event in 2018 for around $617,000.

The idea is very simple:

• All the 2s, 3s, 4s and 5s are removed from the deck: that is 16 cards out.
• Thirty-six cards remain in play (from the 6 to the ace, in all four suits).
• The rest is standard Hold'em: two cards face down per player, five community cards, four betting rounds.

Since there are fewer cards, made hands come up more often and, above all, the odds change. That is why the hand ranking is adjusted:

• A flush beats a full house. With a reduced deck, a flush becomes harder to make than a full house.
• Three of a kind beats a straight in most houses (some variants apply this, others do not; it is worth asking when you sit down).
• The low straight with an ace is A-6-7-8-9, because the 5, 4, 3 and 2 do not exist.

On top of that, it is common to play with a button ante —only the player on the button pays the equivalent of the big blind— instead of the traditional blind system. That makes every hand start with a bigger pot and speeds the game up.

The result is a faster and far more volatile Hold'em. Pots pile up at top speed, decisions are riskier, and that is why it is the favourite variant of millionaire pros looking for real action at short-handed tables. It is not good for beginners: the intuitive odds of normal Hold'em do not hold up here, and hands that "looked good" lose far more often than you would expect.

Less common variants that are still worth knowing about

There is a handful of games you will barely ever see in a big casino, but which survive in private games, in niche tournaments and in the imagination of old-time players. I will run through them quickly so you know what is being talked about when somebody mentions them.

Five-Card Stud

The grandfather of Seven-Card Stud, which ruled the tables of the American West in the nineteenth century. Each player receives five cards: one face down and four face up, with betting between each exposed card. Almost extinct today, but it is part of the history of the game and it still turns up now and again in private rooms in the southern US. If it is ever proposed to you, it is a very different experience from modern poker: the visible information is so extensive that it almost feels like a logic game.

Pineapple and Crazy Pineapple

Variants of Texas Hold'em where each player is given three cards face down instead of two, and has to discard one at some point. In regular Pineapple the discard happens before the flop; in Crazy Pineapple, after the flop, which gives you far more information before deciding which card to let go. It is a smoother poker than PLO and has more action than Hold'em, great fun for home games when you want to add something different without changing the rules altogether. It shows up in the odd niche tournament, but not on the big circuits.

Open-Face Chinese Poker

A very different variant: each player receives 13 cards and arranges them into three hands —of 3, 5 and 5 cards— which have to run in order of strength (the 3-card hand at the bottom, always weaker than the middle one and the top one). No betting rounds: the three hands are compared between players and points are distributed. Very popular in private Asian games and among professionals as a mental break from Hold'em, because it demands planning the construction of the hand rather than reading your opponent. There are versions (Pineapple OFC, 2-7 OFC) that add extra wrinkles.

Lowball and Deuce-to-Seven (2-7)

A family of low variants: the lowest hand wins, with different rules about whether the ace plays high or low and whether straights and flushes count against you. 2-7 Triple Draw is the most demanding lowball because the ace always plays high (the best hand is 7-5-4-3-2 with no flush or straight) and straights and flushes do count against you. There are three discard rounds with betting in between. It is a tough game, highly respected on the American professional circuit and present in the 8-Game Mix.

Badugi

A Korean variant from the draw family that arrived in the United States around 2000. Each player receives four cards and makes hands of up to four cards, on the condition that they are all of a different suit and all of a different rank. The lowest hand under that criterion wins. If you have four different suits, you have a badugi; if you can only make a three-suit hand, you have a three-card badugi; and so on. It is strange, entertaining and very specific. It is played with discards (up to three draw rounds).

Chinese Poker (closed)

Like Open-Face Chinese, but with all 13 cards dealt at once and no progressive construction. Each player arranges their hand into three blocks and they are compared. It is a classic social variant in Asia, with a handful of international tournaments and widely played as a leisure format among professionals of other variants.

Other curiosities: Guts, Follow the Queen, Anaconda

Dealer's choice games —those American home formats where on every hand the dealer decides which variant is played— have dozens of exotic options: Guts (with 3-card hands and sudden death), Follow the Queen (where queens turn cards into wilds), Anaconda (with cards passed between players). None of them is "serious poker", but if you get invited to a family game in the United States, do not be surprised if any of these comes out.

Which variant to play depending on what you want

As a practical summary, a table to point you in the right direction according to your goal. It is not a dogmatic table: it is simply the most reasonable answer to "what do you recommend if I am after X".

How to alternate variants on a home game night

A trick that raises the quality of a game with friends enormously is to rotate variants every so many hands. There is no need to play professional HORSE; just running a homemade version already changes the feel of the night a lot. One format that works well:

1. Open with one or two rounds of Five-Card Draw while everybody arrives and warms up.
2. Move to Texas Hold'em as the backbone of the session —five or six rounds.
3. Drop in a round of Crazy Pineapple or Omaha for variety.
4. If there are experienced players, finish with a round of Razz as a final challenge.

Before you start, spend two minutes explaining each variant out loud when its first round comes around. Everybody does not need to be a master; it is enough that they know how many cards are dealt, what wins and what betting there is. And keep the glossary of poker terms handy in case somebody gets lost with the terminology of bring-in, ante or showdown.

Typical mistakes when trying new variants

When you jump from Hold'em to another variant for the first time, there are three or four very common mental traps worth bearing in mind.

1. Overvaluing hands that are good in Hold'em

The clearest case: a set in Omaha is an ordinary hand, not a monster. A pair of aces in Short-Deck runs into far more made hands than in Hold'em because the big hands come up much more often. Before you sit down, look at a hand ranking table adjusted for the variant and calibrate what each thing is worth in that game.

2. Ignoring Omaha's "exactly two" rule

Extremely common. You see four hearts on the board, you have one heart in your hand, and you think you have a flush. You do not: the rule demands exactly two of your own cards plus exactly three from the board. The dramatic showdowns in Omaha usually happen because somebody applied it wrongly.

3. In Razz, forgetting that straights and flushes do not count

Another classic. You hold A-2-3-4-5 and think "that is a straight, it is no good for low". It is good for low, and it is the best hand of all. Your brain takes a good few hands to absorb that.

4. In Stud, forgetting to look at your opponents' exposed cards

Half the information in Stud is in the face-up cards of the rest of the table. If you are obsessed with your own cards and never look at anybody else's, you are giving up a big part of the game. It is an important change of mindset for anyone arriving from Hold'em, where the only visible cards are the community ones.

5. Applying Hold'em opening ranges to other variants

The ranges of hands you open from each position at the table are specific to Hold'em. In Omaha, for example, the hands you open with are completely different. In Stud there is not even "position" in the same sense, because the bring-in forces the start. Do not blindly transplant what you know.

Frequently asked questions about poker variants

Which is the most played poker variant in the world?

Texas Hold'em, by an enormous margin. It has been the dominant variant in professional tournaments, online games, casinos and home games since the early 2000s. The second most played is Pot-Limit Omaha (PLO), above all at high-level cash tables and in online card rooms.

How does Omaha differ from Texas Hold'em?

In Omaha each player receives four cards face down instead of two, and has to use exactly two of their own plus exactly three of the five community cards to make their final hand. In Hold'em you can use whichever cards you like from the seven available. That rule changes the whole strategy and makes made hands far more frequent.

What is Razz?

It is a Seven-Card Stud variant where the lowest hand wins. Straights and flushes do not count against you and the ace is worth 1 (the lowest value). The best possible hand is A-2-3-4-5 —the "wheel"—. Any pair hurts you immediately. It is played in Limit format and is part of HORSE.

What does HORSE mean in poker?

It is a mixed format combining five variants that rotate: Hold'em, Omaha Hi-Lo, Razz, Stud and Stud Hi-Lo. It is considered the most demanding test for a professional player because it forces you to master several different systems. The WSOP has had a $50,000 buy-in HORSE championship since 2006, won in its first edition by Chip Reese.

What is Short-Deck or 6+ Hold'em?

It is Texas Hold'em but with all the cards from 2 to 5 removed from the deck: 36 cards remain. Made hands come up more often and that is why the ranking is readjusted (a flush beats a full house, for example). It appeared in private games in Asia around 2014 and since 2018 it has had televised tournaments in the Triton Poker Series.

Which is the oldest variant?

Five-Card Draw is probably the oldest form of poker as we know it, the basis of video poker and of home poker. It is considered the "father" of the other variants. The Stud games appeared in the mid-nineteenth century, and the Hold'em games in the early twentieth (modern Texas Hold'em became popular in Texas in the 1960s and went international in the 1980s). The history of the poker deck runs in parallel to that of the variants: every one of them leans on the French-suited 52-card deck.

Are other variants played with a Spanish deck?

No. Poker is a game of French suits and a 52-card English deck. If you want to play with a Spanish deck, there are plenty of traditional games —mus, brisca, tute— but they are not poker. To understand the difference between deck systems, have a look at the suits of the poker deck and the complete guide to poker decks.

Which variant should you learn second, after Hold'em?

It depends what appeals to you. If you want to stay in community card territory and get into something strategically deeper, PLO (Pot-Limit Omaha). If you want a different but classic variant, Seven-Card Stud gives you another way of thinking about poker. If you want a radically opposite experience, Razz forces you to reprogram your brain.

Taking it to the table

Knowing several variants opens up the game in a way you cannot imagine until you try it. A home poker night that alternates rounds of Texas Hold'em with Five-Card Draw and, if the players have experience, one of PLO, is far more entertaining than always playing the same thing. And once you have two or three variants down, you start seeing poker differently: you discover that a large part of what you learned playing Hold'em —positions, pot odds, measured aggression— transfers to the others with nuances, and that the ones that looked "weird" have their own coherent logic.

For almost any variant I covered here —apart from the odd ones like Chinese Poker or Badugi— a standard poker deck will do. But it is worth having a couple in rotation if you are going to play a lot of hands: Stud and Razz, for instance, put a lot of wear on the cards because everybody keeps turning them, and a deck wears out sooner. A Bicycle Standard or a Tally-Ho are the two classic benchmarks and you will find them at any serious table. In our selection of poker decks you have what we would recommend to a friend who is starting out.

If what you fancy now is the deep theory, the logical next steps are understanding why positions at the table matter so much, mastering the poker hand table without thinking and starting to calculate pot odds before every decision. That is where poker stops being a game of luck and starts being what it really is: a game of partial information with repeated decisions.

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