HPD study room · Razz rules and hand reading

Razz poker rules: read the low hand, then find the first player

The navy HPD spade has arrived with an enormous bookmark. Mara, our teacher, has a smaller question: “Are we deciding who starts the betting, or who wins the hand?” In Razz, those questions use different information. A king showing on third street can force you to start, while your eventual low may come entirely from your other cards.

Razz is seven-card stud played for the lowest five-card hand. This lesson uses ordinary ace-to-five, fixed-limit Razz. For tied exposed hands on later streets, the examples use the clockwise-from-the-dealer procedure in the 2026 WSOP live-action rules. The exact ante, bring-in, betting limits and raise cap belong to the table rules; the amounts below are invented classroom units with no cash value.

Start with the rules, then try six complete hand-reading and action-order exercises. Every exact card is written in text. The illustrations are storytelling companions, so there is no card diagram to decipher before you can check an answer.

Jump to the seven-card deal, reading a low, who acts first, fixed-limit amounts, or the six exercises.

The rules to keep beside the hand

• An ace counts as the lowest rank. A king is the highest. The best possible five-card low is 5-4-3-2-A, often called a wheel.
• Straights and flushes do not damage an ace-to-five low. Repeated ranks do matter.
• At showdown, select the best five cards from your seven. You may leave out either face-down or face-up cards.
• There is no eight-or-better qualification and no separate high half. The lowest eligible hand can win even when it is nine-high, king-high or paired.
• On third street, the highest exposed card has the bring-in. From fourth street onward, the lowest exposed hand starts the betting round.
• Third and fourth streets use the small fixed-limit bet. Fifth, sixth and seventh use the big bet. An exposed pair on fourth street does not create a larger-bet option in Razz.

The word “low” can hide a mistake if you stop there. Write the actual ranks. A 9-7-5-3-A hand and a 9-7-6-2-A hand are both nine-lows, but only one is lower. A pair of aces contains the lowest rank twice, yet every unpaired five-card hand still ranks ahead of it.

Follow the deal from third street to seventh

Razz normally uses a standard 52-card deck. Each player posts the stated ante before the deal. The first delivery is two cards face down and one face up. This is called third street because you now have three cards. Your exposed card is also called your door card. The other players can read it; they cannot read your two hidden cards.

• Third street: two hidden cards and one exposed card, followed by the first betting round.
• Fourth street: one more exposed card. You now have two hidden cards and two exposed cards.
• Fifth street: another exposed card. You have five cards in total, with three visible.
• Sixth street: another exposed card, making four visible cards and six cards in total.
• Seventh street: one final hidden card, followed by the last betting round. A normal completed hand contains three hidden cards and four exposed cards.

There is no flop, turn or shared five-card board in the normal deal, and no draw in which you exchange unwanted cards. When a new card pairs you, it stays in the seven-card collection. You may later leave it out of your selected five if the other cards allow that.

To claim a contested pot at showdown, table all seven cards; the best five determine the result. Do not compare only the four upcards. Those cards determined action order while the hand was running; the hidden cards can completely change the finished low. If everyone else has folded, there is no competing showdown hand to beat.

One labeled exception matters when reading unusual records. A full stud table can run short of cards before seventh street. Some published Razz procedures, including PokerStars’ rules, provide a shared face-up final card in that situation. That is an exceptional dealing procedure, not the normal Razz board. None of this lesson’s examples uses it. If an actual record shows a shared river, establish the room’s procedure before reconstructing the deal.

Read a low from its highest rank downward

First choose five cards. For an unpaired hand, put the ranks in descending order and compare the two hands from left to right. At the first different rank, the smaller rank wins. Stop there. Lower cards farther along cannot rescue a hand that already lost the comparison.

For example, 8-7-4-2-A beats 9-5-4-3-2 immediately: eight is below nine. You do not add the ranks. Against another eight-low, continue farther. The hand 8-6-5-3-A beats 8-7-4-2-A because their eights tie and six is below seven. If the first four ranks tie, the fifth still counts.

A useful paper method is to underline the first difference. Write 9-7-5-3-A above 9-7-6-2-A, line the ranks up, then underline five and six. The answer is visible without a nickname or a memory test. Summing either of these hands produces 25 when ace is one, but the hands are not tied. Rank sums are not Razz scores.

A wheel remains the best hand when its cards form a straight or share one suit. Five spades do not make the low worse. Suits still identify physical cards, so record them accurately, but a suit does not break a showdown tie. Two identical five-rank lows tie even if one player has a spade and the other has a club in the matching position.

Choose the best five anew when another card arrives. There is no requirement to use both original hidden cards, any particular upcard, or the last card. If your seven cards contain six different useful low ranks, the highest of those six is usually the one you leave out. If they contain a pair, first check whether five distinct ranks remain available.

What a pair changes

For ace-to-five low, unpaired hands rank ahead of one pair; one pair ranks ahead of two pair, then three of a kind, a full house and four of a kind. Within the same category, lower repeated ranks are better. When one-pair hands have the same pair, compare the remaining single ranks from highest downward.

Do not discard a whole seven-card holding merely because it contains a pair. A-A-2-3-4-5-K can still supply 5-4-3-2-A. You leave out one ace and the king. The relevant question is whether a duplicate must remain in the best five, not whether one appeared anywhere during the deal.

That distinction changes when you are finding the next opener. All currently exposed cards count in that exposed-hand comparison. You cannot hide one of two visible threes because your hidden cards would let you avoid the pair at showdown. A high unpaired exposed hand can therefore open before a visibly paired low-looking hand. Exercise two makes that switch happen across consecutive streets.

Separate the bring-in from later action

On third street, find the highest door-card rank. If the highest rank is tied, the bring-in suit order from high to low is spades, hearts, diamonds, clubs. K♠ therefore brings in ahead of K♥. Hidden cards do not enter this decision. A player with A-2 concealed still has the bring-in if their door card requires it.

After third street, compare the exposed hands for low and begin with the lowest one. In the WSOP live-action procedure used here, equally low exposed hands are resolved by position: the first tied player clockwise from the dealer starts. Do not reuse the third-street suit ranking to break that later tie. If you are reading another room’s record, check its stated action-order procedure.

Once the opener acts, betting continues clockwise. The opener can change when the next upcard arrives. Seventh street is normally hidden, so it does not alter anyone’s exposed ranks; still check which players remain in the hand. “First to act” does not mean “must bet” on a later street. The player can check when facing no bet.

Keep three separate answers in your notes: the third-street bring-in, the later-street opener, and the showdown winner. A fourth answer, which tied winner receives an indivisible odd chip, belongs to the house’s distribution procedure. It does not turn that player’s five-card hand into the better hand. The tied-pot exercise below divides exactly, so no odd-chip rule is needed.

Use the fixed amount for the current street

Our classroom structure is a one-unit ante, a two-unit bring-in, a ten-unit small bet and a twenty-unit big bet. Those are teaching choices, not a claim about a live table. The bring-in player can put in the required small forced amount or start with the full small bet where that option is allowed.

A completion from a two-unit bring-in to ten makes the current third-street total ten. It is not two plus a further ten. Someone who has already posted two needs eight more to reach ten. Someone with no third-street contribution needs the full ten. Antes remain separate from those street contributions.

On fourth street, an opening bet in this example is ten. A normal full raise takes the street total to twenty. On fifth street, an opening bet is twenty and a normal full raise takes it to forty. Sixth and seventh keep the twenty-unit increment. The visible appearance of a pair on fourth street does not move the game to the bigger increment early.

Do not infer a universal number of permitted raises from these amounts. Raise caps, short all-ins, completion procedures and dealing irregularities need the actual rules in force. For the exercises, everybody has enough units, there are no fees, and no action reaches a raise cap. We can therefore reconcile the stated contributions without guessing at an omitted rule.

Six exercises with the answers folded away

These are independent fictional deals. A card may reappear in a different exercise, but cannot appear twice within one deal. The notation uses A, K, Q and J; ten is written as 10. Names indicate players, not recommendations. Where seat order matters, the list starts with the first player clockwise from the dealer. The dealer is not one of the listed players.

1. Two kings at the start

Third street has just been dealt. Clockwise from the dealer, the seats are Mira, Leon, Sana and Oren. Each player has posted a one-unit ante. Their complete starting cards are:

• Mira: hidden A♣ 2♦; door card K♥
• Leon: hidden 3♣ 4♦; door card K♠
• Sana: hidden A♥ 5♦; door card Q♣
• Oren: hidden 2♣ 6♦; door card J♥

The required bring-in is two and the small bet is ten. Identify the bring-in. Then follow this action: the bring-in player posts two, Sana completes to ten, Oren calls, Mira folds, and the bring-in player calls the difference. What is in the pot when third-street betting ends?

Reveal the bring-in and the 34-unit ledger

Leon has the bring-in. Kings are the highest exposed rank, and the spade outranks the heart for this forced-bet decision. Mira’s hidden ace-deuce does not change that. After Leon starts, the clockwise sequence is Sana, Oren, Mira and back to Leon.

The antes contribute 4 × 1 = 4. Leon puts in 2 and later 8, making ten on third street. Sana and Oren each put in ten on that street. Mira has only her ante in the pot. Total: 4 + 10 + 10 + 10 = 34.

An independent player-by-player check gives Mira 1, Leon 11, Sana 11 and Oren 11. Their contributions also total 34. If you get 36, you probably counted Leon’s initial two a second time after treating his call as a fresh ten. The completion changed the amount to match; it did not erase what was already posted.

2. The low-looking pair does not open

Three players remain through sixth street. There are no all-ins. Hidden cards stay hidden for the action-order decision. Read each visible sequence in deal order: door card, fourth, fifth, sixth.

• Mira: hidden A♣ 2♦; exposed sequence 3♥, 3♣, 4♠, 6♦
• Leon: hidden 2♣ 4♦; exposed sequence 5♥, K♣, 8♠, 9♦
• Sana: hidden A♦ 6♣; exposed sequence 7♥, Q♠, Q♣, 7♣

Who opens on fourth, fifth and sixth street? Use only the visible prefix available on that street. In the ten/twenty structure, what opening bet is allowed if that player chooses to bet?

Reveal the changing opener and bet size

On fourth street, Sana opens. Her Q-7 is an unpaired exposed hand and is lower than Leon’s K-5. Mira shows a pair of threes, which ranks behind both unpaired boards for low. The opening bet is ten.

On fifth street, Leon opens with K-8-5. Mira shows 4-3-3 and Sana shows Q-Q-7, both paired. Leon’s king looks unhelpful, but his exposed hand has no pair. The opening bet is now twenty because fifth street has begun.

On sixth street, Leon still opens with K-9-8-5. Mira has 6-4-3-3, one pair; Sana has Q-Q-7-7, two pair. The opening bet stays twenty. Do not remove Mira’s second three from the exposed comparison or use her hidden ace-deuce. Those moves would answer a different question. If a twenty-unit bet is raised once in full, the amount to match on that street becomes forty, not thirty.

3. A later-street tie and a showdown tie

The seats clockwise from the dealer are Mira, Leon and Sana. All remain through seventh street. Their full records are below; each exposed sequence is in deal order. Before revealing the rivers, choose the sixth-street opener using the stated WSOP procedure. Then choose the seventh-street opener and distribute a final 120-unit pot.

• Mira: first hidden cards K♣ Q♦; exposed A♣ 3♦ 6♥ 8♠; hidden river 2♥
• Leon: first hidden cards K♦ Q♣; exposed A♦ 3♣ 6♠ 8♥; hidden river 2♦
• Sana: first hidden cards J♠ 10♥; exposed 2♠ 4♥ 7♣ 9♦; hidden river 3♥

Reveal the positional opener and equal shares

Mira and Leon have identical exposed rank values, 8-6-3-A. Sana’s 9-7-4-2 is higher. Of the two tied low boards, Mira is first clockwise from the dealer, so Mira opens. Their suits do not decide this later-street tie.

Mira also opens seventh street because nobody has folded and the new cards are face down. The visible comparison is unchanged. The river cards matter for the finished hands, though: Mira selects 8♠ 6♥ 3♦ 2♥ A♣, and Leon selects 8♥ 6♠ 3♣ 2♦ A♦.

Both have 8-6-3-2-A. Sana’s best five are 9♦ 7♣ 4♥ 3♥ 2♠, a nine-low. Mira and Leon therefore share the pot: 120 ÷ 2 = 60 each. They have equally ranked hands. Mira’s earlier seat did not earn a larger share, and Leon’s particular suits did not create a tiebreaker.

4. A wheel wearing a flush

The final betting round is complete. These are all seven cards held by each player, with no shared card. Select the best five and compare them.

• Mira: A♠ 2♠ 3♠ 4♠ 5♠ K♥ K♦
• Leon: A♣ 2♦ 3♥ 4♣ 6♥ Q♠ J♦

Reveal why the wheel stays a wheel

Mira selects 5♠ 4♠ 3♠ 2♠ A♠. The ranks make the lowest possible Razz hand. Their shared suit and consecutive sequence impose no penalty in ace-to-five low. Her two kings are outside the selected five.

Leon selects 6♥ 4♣ 3♥ 2♦ A♣, making 6-4-3-2-A. Compare the highest selected ranks first: Mira’s five is below Leon’s six. Mira wins.

Two tempting shortcuts both fail. Calling Mira’s whole holding “a pair of kings” includes cards she need not use. Calling her selected five “a straight flush, so bad for low” imports a different lowball system. Write the actual five and apply the Razz rule to those cards.

5. Nobody makes an eight-low

Two players reach showdown. There is no qualifying threshold. Their seven-card holdings are:

• Mira: 9♣ 7♦ 5♥ 3♠ A♣ Q♦ K♥
• Leon: 9♦ 7♥ 6♣ 2♠ A♦ Q♥ K♠

Choose each best five. Does the absence of an eight-low leave the pot unawarded? If both selected rank totals are 25, does that produce a tie?

Reveal the nine-low comparison

Mira selects 9♣ 7♦ 5♥ 3♠ A♣. Leon selects 9♦ 7♥ 6♣ 2♠ A♦. Each leaves out a queen and a king. The leading nines tie, then the sevens tie. The third comparison is five against six, so Mira has the lower hand.

The pot has a winner even though both lows are nine-high. Razz has no eight-or-better qualifying requirement. There is also no high half waiting for a different winner.

The sums do both equal 25: 9 + 7 + 5 + 3 + 1 and 9 + 7 + 6 + 2 + 1. That equality has no ranking effect. Leon’s deuce cannot compensate for losing at the six. Read the ordered ranks until the first difference, then stop.

6. When the duplicate cannot be left out

Three players reach showdown for a 168-unit pot, with no fees or side pots. Compare Mira and Leon first, then bring Nora into the comparison.

• Mira: A♣ A♦ 2♣ 2♦ 3♥ 3♠ 4♣
• Leon: 2♥ 2♠ 3♣ 3♦ 4♥ 4♠ 5♣
• Nora: K♣ Q♥ J♦ 10♥ 9♠ 9♥ J♣

Reveal the paired lows and the unpaired winner

Mira has only four distinct ranks: ace, two, three and four. Any five-card selection must repeat something. Her best category is one pair, and the lowest pair she can retain is aces. A valid selection is A♣ A♦ 4♣ 3♥ 2♣. Choosing the other available three or deuce changes the suits, not the rank value.

Leon also has four distinct ranks. His best hand is a pair of twos with 5-4-3 alongside, for example 2♥ 2♠ 5♣ 4♥ 3♣. Comparing these two players alone, Mira’s pair of aces is lower than Leon’s pair of twos. Neither gets disqualified for being paired.

Nora can select K♣ Q♥ J♦ 10♥ 9♠, an unpaired king-low. Her extra nine and jack are unused. Even this high unpaired low ranks ahead of either one-pair hand, and its straight does not count against it. Nora receives all 168 units. The selections, rather than the number of small cards scattered through each seven-card holding, settle the result.

Write a record someone else can check

Use one line for the original hidden cards, a second for the exposed cards in deal order, and a third for the hidden river. Add the seats clockwise from the dealer when an action-order tie matters. Keep a separate contribution line for each street. That is enough to prevent most of the errors these examples are designed to expose.

Before comparing hands, check that every card belongs to the deck and that no exact card appears twice in the deal. Two aces with different suits are fine. Two copies of A♣ are a record error. Correct the record before explaining who won; silently swapping a suit invents evidence.

Then answer one question at a time. For action order, cover the hidden cards. For showdown, uncover all seven and name the selected five. For the pot, add actual contributions rather than announced totals. A complete explanation should let another reader repeat the result without trusting your first impression.

Let the spade choose your next question

The HPD spade has finally put the bookmark down. He invites you to Omaha Hi-Lo rules next, where a low really does need to qualify and card selection follows a stricter two-plus-three rule. That contrast is useful immediately after the nine-low exercise.

For a hand you have already saved, use hand-history review without results bias. To make this a short recurring practice, visit the poker study routine and repeat one exercise with a single changed card. State what changed before checking the answer. Mara will still want to see your five cards.