Playing 7 card stud Hi/Lo is exactly like playing proper 7-card stud...at first. Just like the game we all know and love, you are dealt three cards face down, and four cards face up. There is also the same number of betting rounds as there is with the traditional game, the difference comes when the time to grab the pot arrives. Even if you're holding four Aces you may well see half your pot going to a player holding the type of cards that wouldn't play unless Chinese organ smugglers were threatening to take your liver and spleen back to Peking as punishment for folding.

What has happened is that you have just experienced the culture shock that many players go through when they first start playing Hi/Lo games.

A low hand is one that contains five non-repeating cards that are 8 or less. In other words, somebody can win half the pot if they are holding a 2-3-4-6-7. This cuts against the grain of what most people believe is a good, solid poker hand. So the first thing you want to do is throw everything you know about poker out the window. Flushes, Two of a Kind, Two Pair, Trips, Full House, Four of a Kind, etc are all useless when building a low hand.

As we stated earlier, for a hand to qualify as the low hand, the player must use five different cards that are all 8 or less. In other words you cannot have a hand of 2-3-4-5-5. In that hand the 5 is repeated. This disqualifies it as a low hand. Some good examples of hands that do qualify as "low" are as follows:

- 2-3-4-5-6
- 3-4-6-7-8
- 2-4-5-7-8
- Ace-2-3-4-5 (this is the best possible low hand)

Despite the fact that the game is described as a Hi/Lo split game, most players still have a real problem sharing. There is nothing wrong with this, it just means that they are going into the game with the right attitude. So the ultimate aim of the Hi/lo player is to "scoop" the pot, or take the whole thing for themselves.

As was previously mentioned, the best low hand is an Ace-2-3-4-5. This not only gives the player the 5 lowest cards that are less than eight, you will notice that they also have a Straight. This means that this particular hand has a good chance of winning the high part of the pot as well as a being the nuts for the low half of the pot.

Another avenue to the whole pot is to make the best possible high hand that you can, and hope that nobody else has a qualifying low hand, but this requires a good deal of luck, and cant be counted on as a consistent, winning strategy.