Action Razz

It’s razz, except you need a face card to qualify

Same dealing, betting and low ranking as razz. The only change is at showdown: to win, your seven cards must include at least one jack, queen or king. A hand that does is a “Face”; one that doesn’t is a “Butt”. Every Face beats every Butt, regardless of how good the low is. The wheel loses to queens full of kings if the wheel has no paint.

How rare is it? It’s a festival and home-game invention from summer 2020 at BARGE (Kevin Un and others, per Greg Raymer). It’s in BARGE’s rulebook and a Card Player Lifestyle list of festival games, but not in the WSOP, Robert’s or TDA rules. Haney writes that “Action Razz isn’t that widely known.” You’ll probably only see it in a dealer’s-choice home game or festival.

30-second cheat sheet

• Razz deal: ante, two down, one up, then three up, then one down. Five betting rounds. Small bet 3rd/4th, big bet 5th-7th.
• Highest door card (K♠ highest) brings it in, as in razz. Lowest board acts first afterward.
• Qualifier: at least one J, Q or K anywhere in your seven cards. It doesn’t have to be in your five-card low.
• Face beats Butt. Among Faces, best A-5 low wins (ace low, no straights/flushes).
• If nobody qualifies, or everyone does, plain razz decides.
• The bring-in can finally be a good hand.

Full rules

The deal and betting

Exactly razz: ante, two cards down and one up, then three more up and one more down, betting after every card. Whoever shows the highest door card brings it in. Afterwards the player showing the best (lowest) hand acts first.

Qualifying

At showdown, a player qualifies only if at least one of their seven cards is a jack, queen or king. It doesn’t need to be one of the five cards you use for your low. A-3-J-4-5-7-9 is a qualifying seven-low.

Who wins

• A qualifier beats a non-qualifier, no matter what. BARGE’s example: A-2-3-4-5-6-7 with no paint, the best possible razz hand, loses to K-K-K-K-Q-Q-Q.
• Among qualifiers, the lowest five-card A-5 low wins.
• If nobody qualifies at showdown, or if everybody does, normal razz rules decide.
• BARGE example: P1 holds 2♥2♦3♠3♣4♦5♠7♣, P2 holds A♥A♦2♠4♣4♥6♠8♣, and P3 holds 3♥5♦7♠8♦9♥Q♠K♣. Neither of the first two has paint, so P3 wins with 9-8-7-5-3. In a side pot between P1 and P2 only, nobody would have paint, so plain razz applies and P1’s 7-5-4-3-2 beats P2’s eight-low.
• Ties split, and odd chips go by stud rules.

Rooms disagree

• Nobody qualifies: BARGE and Raymer fall back to normal razz. Card Player Lifestyle’s mixed-game rules say the pot is split among players who reach showdown. This page uses BARGE and Raymer’s rule.
• Bring-in: BARGE and Raymer say the highest card (K♠). Haney describes the 10♠ as the bring-in. I can’t reconcile these from the text; this page uses BARGE.
• Super version: Haney says it can be played as “super” but recommends two down cards only, “otherwise it’s too easy to get a face card”. BARGE has a separate “Action Razzdugi”.

Worked examples

The hand evaluator doesn’t yet support the face-card qualifier, so there are no verified examples for this game. The rules examples above are BARGE’s own.

How you’ll embarrass yourself

• Believing the wheel always wins. With no paint, it loses to any qualifying hand, even a bad one.
• Thinking the paint card has to be in your five low cards. It just has to be among your seven.
• Folding the bring-in with a jack up. In razz the bring-in is dead money. Here it can be a good hand, and Raymer says about a third of the time your opponents never catch paint.
• Calling down with garbage when you hold paint and your opponent doesn’t. Raymer’s point: K-high with paint can beat a wheel without it.

Lore and reputation

Raymer (2004 WSOP Main Event winner) wrote in Card Player in January 2021 that razz’s bring-in is “essentially dead money” and Kevin Un wanted a stud lowball game where the bring-in could have a good hand. The BARGE rulebook calls it “a creation of Kevin Un” and credits Cliff Matthews with the names Face and Butt (the rulebook says “believed” for the second). Haney (Card Player, 2026) says he played it a few times, that it “certainly lived up to its name and was a lot of fun”, and that about 70% of A-2-4 starters will find paint by 7th street.