Badeucy

It’s 2-7 triple draw, except every hand has to do two jobs

You’ve (maybe) played 2-7 triple draw: five cards, three draws, lowest hand wins, aces high, straights and flushes are poison. Badeucy plays exactly the same way, but the pot is split in half. One half goes to the best 2-7 low. The other half goes to the best badugi: the best four cards that are all different suits and all different ranks.

You’re looking at the same five cards two different ways, and the two halves are judged independently. You can win one, both, or neither.

30-second cheat sheet

• Five cards each, three draws, four betting rounds. Small bet before the draw and after the first draw, big bet after the second and third.
• Half 1: 2-7 low, five cards. Aces high, straights and flushes count against you. Best hand: 7-5-4-3-2, not all one suit.
• Half 2: badugi, up to four cards, all different suits and ranks. Four cards beat three, three beat two. Within the same size, lower is better.
• Aces are high in both halves. The best badugi is 5-4-3-2 in four suits, and A-2-3-4 is not the nuts here.
• Almost always played limit, six players max.

Full rules

The deal

There’s a button, a small blind and a big blind, like any flop game. Everybody gets five cards face down. Betting starts to the left of the big blind.

The draws

After the first betting round, starting left of the button, each player says how many cards to throw away (zero to five) and gets replacements. Zero is called standing pat. Then betting. Do that three times in total. In limit games the first two betting rounds use the small bet and the last two use the big bet (double).

2-7 low half

All five of your cards count. The aces are always high. A straight or flush is worse than any pair: 6-5-4-3-2 is a straight and a terrible hand. Pairs are bad too. The best possible hand is 7-5-4-3-2 with mixed suits. You compare from the top card down, so 9-7-5-3-2 beats 10-6-4-3-2.

Badugi half

Pick the best four-or-fewer of your five cards where every card has a different suit and a different rank. A four-card badugi always beats a three-card hand, however ugly the four-card one is. If both players have the same number of cards, compare the highest card first, lowest wins. The ace is the highest card. A-2-3-4 in four suits is an ace-high badugi and loses to K-Q-J-9. The best badugi is 5-4-3-2, and the dream hand is 2-3-4-5-7 with four suits, which is the nuts for both halves.

Ties

A tie splits that half. If two players tie for the badugi half, they each get a quarter of the whole pot.

Worked examples

Two good hands, one chopped pot

A real hand from the 2019 WSOP $1,500 Dealer's Choice

Collopy

• Badugi (aces high):9-5-3-2 badugi
• 2-7 Low:9-7-5-3-2 low✓ wins

Ross

• Badugi (aces high):6-4-3-2 badugi✓ wins
• 2-7 Low:T-6-4-3-2 low

Collopy takes half · Ross takes half

This hand actually happened at the 2019 WSOP $1,500 Dealer’s Choice. Collopy had a lovely 9-7-5-3-2 for the low. Ross’s best low was ten-high, which loses. But Ross’s four cards 6-4-3-2 form a rainbow badugi, and Collopy’s best badugi, 9-5-3-2, is higher. Result: one half each.

The ace trap

The ace is high, so A-2-3-4 is not the nuts

Xavier

• Badugi (aces high):A-4-3-2 badugi
• 2-7 Low:Pair of Fours (bad for 2-7)

Yolanda

• Badugi (aces high):5-4-3-2 badugi✓ wins
• 2-7 Low:8-5-4-3-2 low✓ wins

Yolanda scoops the whole pot.

Xavier has the classic A-2-3-4 rainbow that is the nuts in ordinary Badugi. Here the ace counts high, so it’s an ace-high badugi and Yolanda’s 5-4-3-2 beats it. Yolanda also takes the 2-7 half, since Xavier’s pair of fours loses to her 8-5-4-3-2.

A straight that’s useless for low

A straight wrecks the low but makes the nut badugi

Rita

• Badugi (aces high):5-4-3-2 badugi✓ wins
• 2-7 Low:Six-high straight (bad for 2-7)

Tom

• Badugi (aces high):Q-J-9-8 badugi
• 2-7 Low:K-Q-J-9-8 low✓ wins

Rita takes half · Tom takes half

Rita’s 2-3-4-5-6 is a straight, which is a disaster in 2-7. But her 5-4-3-2 is the best possible badugi, so she gets half the pot with a “wheel-looking” hand. Tom wins low with K-Q-J-9-8, an ugly king-high hand that just has no straight or pair.

Quartered

Tie one half, lose the other

Ann

• Badugi (aces high):5-4-3-2 badugi✓ wins
• 2-7 Low:K-5-4-3-2 low

Ben

• Badugi (aces high):5-4-3-2 badugi✓ wins
• 2-7 Low:7-5-4-3-2 low✓ wins

Ann takes a quarter · Ben takes three quarters

Ann and Ben both have 5-4-3-2 rainbow for the badugi half, so they split it. Ben’s 7-5-4-3-2 is the nut low, so he takes the whole 2-7 half. Ben gets three quarters of the pot and Ann gets one.

How you’ll embarrass yourself

• Treating the ace as low in the badugi half. This is the number one mistake. A-2-3-4 is not the nuts. It’s an ace-high badugi.
• Thinking A-2-3-4-5 is the best 2-7 hand. It’s ace-high and not even good.
• Keeping a pat 2-7 hand with no badugi. Something like 2-3-4-5-7 with four hearts and a seven is a perfect low, but only a two-card badugi, so you’re easy to freeroll for half the pot.
• Forgetting a four-card badugi of any rank beats every three-card hand. A king-high four-suit badugi is better than a perfect three-card A-2-3.
• Playing it as a deep game. It’s a six-handed limit game. Don’t ask for a table of nine.

Lore and reputation

Badeucy (spelled Baduci in WSOP live-action rules and Badeucey in the WSOP tournament rules) shows up around Las Vegas in the mid-2000s, and Bryan Devonshire wrote in Card Player that it “first showed up in Vegas around 2007”. It’s a staple of high-stakes mixed games, and it was on the list of Dealer’s Choice games at the WSOP when those events started. Pros love to say the game is about freerolling: freeroll them, don’t get freerolled.

If you want the version with ace-to-five low and an ace-low badugi, that’s a different game called Badacey.