Michael Monroe asked:

Razz is the same game as Seven Card Stud, except the objective is to get the lowest possible hand instead of the highest. The best possible hand in RAZZ is A2345. Just like all the other poker games, you can only use 5 cards to make your hand. Each player will end up with a total of seven cards at the end of each hand. The player with the lowest five card poker hand will win. Flushes and straights have no effect on how low the hand is. Many of the top online poker rooms offer this variation of poker including Full Tilt Poker, Poker Stars, PartyPoker but many don’t like Titan Poker and Everest Poker.

To start each player will get dealt two cards face down and one card face up. The player with the highest card face up will have to bring in. This counts as the first round bet, and it must be the low limit bet size that gets put into the pot. From there each player will bet starting with the person to the left of the player that had started the betting will have the option to call, raise, or fold.

The typical betting structure of RAZZ is fixed limit, where there are five total rounds of betting. All of the bets must be equal the low or high limit bet size, depending on what round it is. If you are playing 5-10 RAZZ, all of the bets in the first and second round will be in increments or 5 dollars, and all of the bets in the last three rounds will be in increments of 10 dollars. There is a maximum of three raises per betting round.

After the first round will come the fourth card face up. At this point the player with the lowest hand (A 2 is the lowest possible) will bet first. If by chance two players are tied for the low hand, then the player closest to the dealer will lead. The bet must be equal to the low limit. The next round is the same as this one except that the betting will move over to the high limit. The 6th card will also be face up, and will follow with the same betting pattern.

The last round will consist of every player to get a card face down. This will be the last round of betting and the last card. All of the bets must be equal to the high limit bet size. Once all the betting is done for this round there will be a showdown. This is the part where all of the players show their cards. The player with the lowest hand will win the pot. If there are players who have a tie hand, they will split the pot. The player that bet last must show first, and the rest can much if they choose.

Note: It is possible that if all 8 players stay in the hand for all of the rounds, although very rare. If this happens, then there will not be enough cards. If this happens, there will not be given a 7th card to each player. Instead there is a community card that is dealt face up that everyone can use.