Poker Variants
Texas Hold'em is just the start. Here are the major poker variants — stud, draw, lowball, short deck, and mixed games — and how each one actually plays.
Texas Hold’em dominates today, but “poker” is really a family of games. The big poker variants split into four styles: community-card games like Hold’em and Omaha, stud games where cards are dealt face up and down, draw games where you swap cards, and lowball games where the worst hand wins. Mixed-game formats like HORSE rotate several of these in one session.
The major poker variants at a glance
| Variant | Family | Cards you use | Best hand wins? | Quick description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Texas Hold’em | Community | 2 hole + 5 board | High | Two hole cards, five shared; the world’s most popular game. |
| Omaha | Community | 4 hole (use 2) + board | High | Four hole cards, must use exactly two — bigger pots, bigger draws. |
| Seven-Card Stud | Stud | 7 (best 5) | High | No flop. Cards dealt up and down across five betting rounds. |
| Razz | Stud (lowball) | 7 (best 5 low) | Low | Seven-card stud in reverse — the lowest hand wins, straights and flushes don’t count. |
| Five-Card Draw | Draw | 5 (swap once) | High | Five cards, one draw, one showdown. The “Wild West” game. |
| Badugi | Draw (lowball) | 4 | Low | Four-card lowball; you want four low cards of four different suits. |
| Short Deck (6+) | Community | 2 hole + board | High | Hold’em with 2s–5s removed; a flush beats a full house. |
| Chinese Poker | Setting | 13 (3 hands) | High | Arrange 13 cards into three poker hands; scored by row. |
How the four families differ
Community-card games (Hold’em, Omaha, short deck) deal shared cards in the middle that everyone combines with their private cards. They produce the biggest fields and the clearest TV spectacle. If you’re starting from scratch, the beginner’s guide to poker covers the Hold’em foundation that carries over.
Stud games (seven-card stud, razz) have no community cards. Instead, some of your cards are dealt face up for everyone to see, which changes the whole information game — you read opponents partly from their visible cards rather than from betting alone.
Draw games (five-card draw, badugi) hide all your cards and let you discard and replace some of them. Information is scarce, so reading bet sizing and draw counts matters more than in any other family.
Lowball games (razz, badugi, and the low half of split-pot games) flip the goal: the worst hand by high-card rules wins. This trips up new players constantly, so it’s worth learning the inverted poker hand rankings logic before you sit down.
Where to start
Pick a variant by what you want to learn:
- Closest to Hold’em: short deck poker rules — same shape, faster action, and the surprising rule that flushes outrank full houses.
- The classic before Hold’em: seven-card stud rules — the game that ruled card rooms for decades.
- Learn to think in reverse: how razz poker works — pure lowball, a great brain-stretch.
- The simplest game of all: five-card draw rules — perfect for home games and teaching kids… er, adults.
- All of the above at once: HORSE and mixed games — rotating formats that separate the well-rounded players from the one-trick specialists.
Why bother learning other variants?
Three reasons. First, softer competition — fields outside Hold’em are full of players who only know one game, so versatility is an edge. Second, better fundamentals — stud sharpens your card reading, lowball forces you to rethink hand values, and mixed games expose every leak. Third, variety — even a quick home-game rotation through five-card draw and seven-card stud keeps the night fresh.
You don’t have to abandon Texas Hold’em to explore. Treat the variants as a way to deepen your overall game, then come back to your main format a sharper player.