Archie

It’s five-card draw, except it’s split three ways to be annoying

You know five-card draw: five cards, a draw, a bet, a showdown. Archie keeps the five cards but gives you three draws with a betting round after each, like triple draw. Then the pot is split in half:

• Half goes to the best ordinary poker hand (flushes, full houses, the usual).
• Half goes to the best ace-to-five low (aces low, straights and flushes ignored, best hand A-2-3-4-5).

The kicker is that both halves have a qualifier. A high hand has to be at least a pair of nines to win its half. A low has to be eight-high or better to win its half. And it’s the same five cards judged both ways, with no declaring. You don’t pick a side. The cards speak.

It’s not Omaha or stud eight-or-better. There’s no board, and you can’t hold a made low “for free” while a good high rides along. In Archie, the cards that are great for low (A-2-3-4) are usually junk for high, and the cards that are great for high (kings, nines) are usually junk for low.

30-second cheat sheet

• Five cards each, face down. Button and blinds. Three draws, four betting rounds. Almost always limit.
• High half: best five-card poker hand, but it must be a pair of nines or better to qualify. Anything better than a pair also qualifies: two pair, a straight, a flush, and so on.
• Low half: best ace-to-five low, but it must be eight-high or better (8-7-6-5-4 is the worst qualifying low). Pairs kill a low. Straights and flushes don’t.
• If nobody qualifies high, the best qualifying low takes the whole pot. If nobody qualifies low, the best qualifying high takes the whole pot.
• If nobody qualifies either way, WSOP rules split the pot among everyone still in. Other rooms differ (see below).
• A wheel (A-2-3-4-5) is the best low and a five-high straight, so it competes for both halves.
• Usually capped at six players, because three draws chew through the deck.

Full rules

The deal

There’s a button, a small blind and a big blind, like any flop game. The WSOP rules say it’s “normally played with one or more blinds, sometimes with an ante added”. Every player gets five cards face down. Betting starts to the left of the big blind.

The WSOP text borrows its opening wording from lowball: you have to open with a bet or fold. Some structures allow the big blind to be called, and some make the minimum open double the big blind. This varies by room, so ask.

Draws and betting

After the first betting round, starting with the first live player left of the button, each player says how many cards to throw away (zero to five) and gets that many replacements. Standing pat (taking zero) is allowed. Then there’s a betting round, starting left of the button. Do that three times, so there are four betting rounds in all.

In limit, the bets double partway through. The usual structure is the small bet before the first draw and after it, and the big bet after the second and third draws. A game this deep can eat the deck, so the WSOP says to shuffle the old discards, mucks and burn cards into the stub when it runs low, but not the cards from the draw currently in progress. The last card of the stub is only used if it completes every remaining draw. That’s also why six players is the normal cap, and seven is only possible with an occasional reshuffle.

Showdown: the high half

All five of your cards, ordinary poker rankings, aces high. To win the high half you must qualify with a pair of nines or better. That means 9-9 through A-A, and also any hand ranked above a pair: two pair of any size, trips, a straight, a flush, and so on. A pair of eights doesn’t qualify. Ace-high doesn’t qualify.

Showdown: the low half

All five cards again, read as ace-to-five low. Aces are low. Straights and flushes don’t count against you. Pairs are bad: any hand without a pair beats any hand with one. You compare from the top card down, so 8-5-3-2-A beats 8-6-3-2-A. To qualify, you need five different ranks, all eight or lower. The worst qualifying hand is 8-7-6-5-4.

Who wins what

• Best qualifying high takes half. Best qualifying low takes the other half. One player can win both.
• No qualifying high: the best qualifying low wins the whole pot (WSOP rule 293).
• No qualifying low: the best qualifying high wins the whole pot (WSOP rule 294).
• Nobody qualifies for anything: under WSOP rule 295 the pot is split by everyone remaining in the hand.
• Ties split the half that’s tied.

A few hands, no suits needed, to see it working:

• Player A shows 8-5-3-2-A: that’s a qualifying low, but with no pair it doesn’t qualify for high. Player B shows K-K-7-4-2: a qualifying high, but with the pair it has no low. A wins the low half, B wins the high half.
• Player C shows 6-5-4-3-2. That’s a six-high straight, and it’s also a six-low. Player D shows 9-9-J-3-2, a pair of nines that qualifies high only. C’s straight beats D’s pair for high, and C’s low is the only low. C scoops.
• One player has A-K-J-8-5, and another has Q-9-7-4-3. Neither has a pair of nines, and neither is eight-low. Nobody qualifies. Under WSOP rules they split the pot.

Rooms disagree

Archie is young and there’s no single rulebook. This page follows the WSOP 2026 live-action rules, and these are the places other rooms differ:

• High qualifier: the WSOP, Pagat, CountingOuts and Card Player all say a pair of nines. The BARGE rulebook and Steve Badger’s strategy page default to a pair of sixes. Card Player’s Haney says nines is typical but some games use sixes. If you’re playing for real, ask. (Some people call the nines version “99 Archie”.) The eight-or-better low qualifier is the one thing everybody agrees on.
• Nobody qualifies: the WSOP and Pagat split the pot among everyone left. CountingOuts says that’s what most rules do but that some rooms give it to the best non-qualifying hand. BARGE and Badger give the pot to the best high hand, even if it’s weaker than a pair of sixes. Haney and Pagat mention rooms where the pot carries over to the next hand.
• Odd chips: the WSOP’s general rule (rule 153) gives the odd chip in a high-low split to the high hand. Its “Mixed Games” notes say button games give it to the player in the worst position. The Archie section doesn’t say which applies, so ask the floor.
• Blinds or ante: the WSOP allows either. Pagat says no ante.

How you’ll embarrass yourself

• Playing it like Omaha eight-or-better. You can’t hold a made low and also have a free ride at high. A 7-4-3-2-A is a lovely low, but it has no high potential at all, so you’re usually playing for half the pot (the whole pot only if nobody qualifies high).
• Overrating low draws. A pair of nines or better shows up in roughly 27% of five-card deals. An eight-low shows up in about 2%. Qualifying is much easier on the high side, so “I have 2-3-6” is weaker than it feels. Haney and CountingOuts both warn that low-oriented hands are overrated.
• Not asking about the qualifier. Sixes versus nines, and what happens when nobody qualifies, change which hands are worth playing. Ask before you pay for your first draw.
• Breaking a made hand for the wrong reason. A pat eight-low is a qualifier, and a qualifier matters. Haney says breaking an eight to draw to a wheel can be right early on, but later you often want to keep what qualifies.
• Dismissing straight draws. A low straight draw (3-4-5-6, say) is premium because a straight qualifies high and the same cards can make a low. Badger makes the same point.
• Expecting a nuts. You can start with A♥ K♥ 8♥ 3♥ and finish with four kings or 8-7-6-3-A. Hands drift a lot over three draws.

Lore and reputation

Archie was invented, according to Pagat, “some time in the 2010s by a mixed game group in Phoenix, Arizona” and named after one of the players. The story told by CountingOuts and Haney is more specific: a Phoenix player named Archie took a big loss when the game was new, so it got his name. Treat the origin as a story, not a documented fact.

Pagat says it’s “increasingly featured in mixed games in Las Vegas”. Card Player Lifestyle calls it “one of the rarest and most complex draw games”, grown popular on the Las Vegas mixed-game scene. The WSOP live-action rules include it, though it’s not on the PokerNews/PokerListings 20-game WSOP Dealer’s Choice menu. It appears in the Coach’s Game at Resorts World (an $8-$16 mix of 17 games), per Card Player in 2023.

Opinions are strong. Haney rates it 8/10 and calls it “polarizing”: pots get huge, there are brutal coolers, and many say they dislike it but few leave the rotation. Badger calls it possibly “the most complex variant played in casinos” at time of writing, and “a rather terrible [game] for inattentive… players”. In 2017 CountingOuts noted that “Archie is a new game and no books currently have any material on it.”

Haney also mentions “777”, a three-way split between best high, best low and best badugi, with trip-sevens, seven-low and seven-badugi qualifiers. He rates it 4/10 and I found no room that spreads it.