Tips and Strategies for Playing 6th Street in Seven Card Stud Poker

One would imagine that playing 6th street in 7-card Stud would be pretty straight forward, seeing as how most of the action has already taken place and 6th street is the last card to be dealt face up. It should be pretty obvious who has what and what they may be drawing too.

But that is not always the case since poker is not straightforward and consistent. Many players who have yet to make a hand have folded by now and the betting has gotten larger on 5th street making it more attractive to chase draws. With only one more card to come, it is now the time to really try and figure out where your opponents stand and furthermore, try to figure out where you stand to either maximize your winnings or minimize your losses.

7-Card Stud 6th Street Tips – Evaluating Hands

One of the first steps to playing 6th street is evaluating your opponent’s hand to determine what they may have or may be drawing to in relation to your hand.

For example, let us assume that you have: [Kh][Ah] -Ad-Kd-9s-8c

And your opponent has: [X][X] – 10h-Jh-9h-As

This is quite an interesting hand to say the least. Obviously your opponent is on a straight and flush draw, if they have not hit it already, and worse yet, they have at least of one your outs to keep you from filling up on 7th street. So what do you do?

Well, if your opponent has been rather passive and just calling down to 6th street, you may be ahead while they are just trying to draw for cheap. In a scenario like this, the only thing you can do is bet and hope to discourage anyone trying to chase draws. If they happen to make their straight or flush, the only hand that will beat your opponent is a full boat and this can only be accomplished by filling up on 7th street with only 3 outs available (that you know of). The point to take away from this example is to examine both your hands and the action that has taken place up to now. Using this knowledge you will determine if you are ahead or not and bet accordingly.

Now, there is something else to keep in mind as well. Using the same hands as shown above, a player must try to remember what cards are “live” and what cards are “dead” to not only your hand, but your opponent’s as well. Meaning, a player must know how many outs are available to better either hands.

So for example, if you noticed that all the up cards of your opponents consisted of low cards then the likelihood of your opponent hitting one of their outs has increased exponentially. In this scenario, you would want to go to 7th street as cheaply as possible, because more times often than not, you are going to lose this hand and would like to lose as little as possible in the long run.

But if you noticed that many of your opponents had up cards that consisted of Q’s, the last two K’s, and even the last Ace, it would be worth it to try to raise this hand and if your opponent were paying attention to the up cards as well, they would realize they had few outs and be smart and fold.

Of course, this is all speculation and it is possible that your opponent already has a made hand, but if you folded every time you thought your opponent had you beat without putting any logic behind it, you would simply lose a lot of money.

Optimal Play for 6th Street

What you should take away from this is very simple; pay attention to the live and dead cards, analyze the texture of the up cards of both you and your opponent, and from there you need to figure the odds of hitting those outs for both you and your opponent. From here, a player should be able to figure out if it is profitable in the long run to try to bet on 6th street to get more money while they are ahead to potentially win on 7th street, or slow down and not bet in hopes to keep the pot small since the odds may be against them. It can be a difficult process to go through all in a short time, but with practice, you will get there and will find that it was worthwhile and profitable.

Posted by Senior Editor on Feb 23 2011. Filed under Poker Strategy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.