2-7 Single Draw Rules: Deuce-to-Seven Lowball

Picture 7♣ 4♦ 3♠ 2♥ K♠ in your hand. Four of those cards are a dream lowball hand; the king is the only flaw. Toss it, catch a five or six, and you have a monster. That single decision — how many cards to swap, and whether to swap at all — is nearly the whole game of 2-7 single draw.

Deuce-to-seven single draw is a one-draw lowball game where the lowest hand wins, the ace is always high, and straights and flushes count against you. Those two twists mean the best possible hand is 7-5-4-3-2 unsuited — five low cards that don’t line up into a straight. You get exactly one draw to build it, and most rooms spread it as no-limit.

Reading a low: highest card down

Standard high rankings are read backward here — the worst high hand is the best low hand, and an ace never plays as a one.

Hand	Why it ranks there
7-5-4-3-2	Number one — lowest five cards, no straight
7-6-4-3-2	Second best
8-6-5-4-2	A typical strong eight-low
6-5-4-3-2	A straight — scored as a high hand, so it’s weak
A-K-Q-J-10	High ace plus two picture cards — near the bottom

Compare from the top card down. A seven-low always beats an eight-low, and among sevens, 7-5-4-3-2 beats 7-6-4-3-2 because the five undercuts the six.

The sequence of a hand

1. Blinds posted, Hold’em style.
2. Deal — five cards face down to each player.
3. First betting round, left of the big blind.
4. The draw — in turn, discard 0–5 cards for replacements. This happens once.
5. Second betting round.
6. Showdown — lowest hand takes the pot.

Pat or draw one?

With a single draw, your strategy collapses into that one choice. Back to 7♣ 4♦ 3♠ 2♥ K♠: drawing one and pitching the king, roughly 16 of the 47 unseen cards (any 8, 6, or 5) hand you a made seven or eight — about a one-in-three shot at a premium, with more cards giving a playable result.

Now compare standing pat with a made eight like 8♠ 6♦ 4♣ 3♥ 2♠. You can’t improve, but you can’t get worse either, and in no-limit you get to bet it hard while a one-card drawer is still guessing what they’ll catch.

How it differs from triple draw

The scoring matches 2-7 triple draw exactly, but the feel is different:

• One draw, not three. Far less room to repair a hand, so you need a made hand or a strong one-card draw to a smooth low just to enter.
• No-limit, not fixed-limit. Triple draw is usually limit; single draw’s no-limit format brings stack-threatening rivers and snap-offs.
• Position is huge. Acting last, you watch how many cards everyone drew before you decide to draw or stand pat.

The habitual errors are drawing two to a rough low, playing hands with aces or picture cards, chasing 6-5-4-3-2 (that’s a straight), and never once repping a pat hand in a no-limit format built for bluffing.

Once the one-draw math is automatic, add the extra streets in 2-7 triple draw, see how an ordinary draw game flows in five-card draw, or browse the variants hub.