Hi-dugi

It’s Badugi, except the goal is to be high, and pairs are good

You may have seen Badugi: four cards, draw to a hand with four different suits and four different ranks, lowest wins. Hi-dugi keeps the four cards and the idea of a four-suit hand, but flips what you want. You want the highest hand, and you’re allowed to pair up. In fact, pairs make your hand better.

The weird part is the nuts. You’d guess the best hand is A-K-Q-J in four suits. It isn’t. The best hand is A-A-A-A, four aces, which are automatically four different suits.

This one is thin on documentation, so I’ve marked the things the sources don’t say. The main source is Card Player Lifestyle’s Mixed Game Festival rule sheet, which is the only place I found Hi-dugi listed as its own draw game.

30-second cheat sheet

• Four cards each, face down, standard blinds-game betting. Presumably played like Badugi: three draws of 0 to 4 cards (the rule sheet doesn’t say, so that’s an inference).
• A dugi is a four-card hand with four different suits. Ranks may repeat.
• Highest dugi wins the whole pot. No split.
• Ranking, best to worst: four aces, then other quads, trips, two pair, one pair, no pair (all of them in four suits), and last of all the hands that aren’t a dugi.
• Any dugi beats any hand that isn’t one. The rule sheet says “a four-card Badugi always beats any non-Badugi hand.”
• A rainbow with no pair loses to a rainbow with a pair.

Full rules

The deal and betting

The rule sheet says Hi-dugi is “a draw poker variant played with four hole cards and using the standard betting rules of games with blinds.” That’s all it says about structure. It doesn’t give a number of draws or a limit format. [INFERENCE: it plays like Badugi, with button and blinds, four cards, three draws and limit betting. It’s listed next to Badugi and Badugi Hi-Low as the high mirror.]

So: four cards face down, betting before the first draw, each player may then replace 0 to 4 cards, and there’s a betting round after each draw.

What’s a dugi?

A dugi is four cards with four different suits. That’s the only requirement. The rule sheet’s very first sentence says “different suits and ranks”, but the lines after it rank “4-of-a-kind dugi”, “3-of-a-kind dugi”, “two pair dugi” and “one pair dugi”, so ranks can match. The Coach’s Game write-up of the related Drawmaha Hi-dugi agrees: “quads, trips, two pair, and pairs are good”.

Ranking

From the rule sheet, best to worst:

1. A-A-A-A. Four aces, which can only be four suits. This is the best hand.
2. Other four-of-a-kind dugis, then trips dugis. The second-best hand is three aces plus a king of the fourth suit (any AAAK combination).
3. Two-pair dugis.
4. One-pair dugis.
5. No-pair dugis: four different ranks and four different suits.
6. Hands that aren’t a dugi at all (“3-of-a-kind no dugi, etc.”).

Within the same kind, the natural reading is normal high-hand comparison: higher pair first, then the kickers, aces high. [INFERENCE: the sheet doesn’t spell this out.]

A forum example from Poker Chip Forum: A♣ A♦ A♥ Q♥ loses to 2♣ 5♦ 9♥ K♠. The first hand looks mighty (three aces) but its Q♥ and A♥ are both hearts, so it’s not a dugi. The second hand is a plain rainbow, which is a dugi.

What the sources don’t say

I couldn’t find anything that says how two non-dugi hands are compared (by number of suits? card count like Badugi? plain poker rank?), what the odd chip rule is, or how many draws there are. [UNVERIFIED] Ask before you play it.

Rooms disagree

Three different things get called Hi-dugi:

1. Card Player Lifestyle: the standalone four-card draw game on this page, with the best high dugi winning the whole pot. This is the version this page uses.
2. A 2+2 forum thread titled “Hi-Dugi”: I only saw a search-engine snippet, because the page wouldn’t load. It describes a “split pot 5 card draw game” where the pot is split between the best four-card badugi and the best five-card high poker hand. That’s a five-card split game, closer to Badeucy than to this. Unverified, since I couldn’t read the thread.
3. Drawmaha Hi-dugi (see Badugi High Drawmaha): the Omaha-board game whose draw half is a hi-dugi built from your five hole cards. This is the most visible use in real rooms. The Coach’s Game at Resorts World spreads “Drawmaha High-Dugi”, not standalone Hi-dugi.

Evidence that the standalone version is actually spread anywhere is thin, since the Mixed Game Festival rule sheet is the only listing I found.

How you’ll embarrass yourself

• Thinking A-K-Q-J rainbow is the nuts. It’s not. A-A-A-A is the best, then AAAK. A Poker Chip Forum poster wrote, “I thought it was AKQJ rainbow, but it lists AAAA as the best one.” Haney also says it’s “not an A-K-Q-J badugi as some might expect”.
• Forgetting that a pair beats a no-pair rainbow. Count your pairs first. A K-K-4-2 in four suits beats A-K-Q-J in four suits.
• Treating it as the low game. Suits just have to differ, and low cards get no bonus. Wheel-looking cards like 4-3-2 are just small cards here.
• Confusing it with Badugi Hi-Lo. Different game, different scoring. In Hi-Lo you need four different ranks, and the high half is judged by the lowest card. Here, pairs are allowed and great.
• Falling in love with trips. Three aces plus a card that shares a suit with one of them isn’t a dugi at all, and loses to a plain rainbow.

Lore and reputation

Card Player Lifestyle lists Hi-dugi among its Mixed Game Festival draw games, alongside Archie, Ari, Badacey, Badeucey, Badugi and Badugi Hi-low. Haney describes the Drawmaha High-Dugi version and says a single high pair in four suits (his example is K♣ K♠ 10♦ 4♥ 3♥) will typically be the best badugi at showdown.

A 2022 Poker Chip Forum thread has the poster dropping Hi-dugi from a home mix because of the effort of explaining it, and keeping Badugi and Archie as the two draw games. “Dugi” is obviously clipped from Badugi. The inventor isn’t documented.