Razz

It’s like Seven-Card Stud, except the worst hand wins

Same cards, same streets, same face-up cards. The only difference is that the lowest five-card hand takes the whole pot. No half for high, no qualifier. If every hand at the table is garbage, the least garbage wins.

Everything is flipped to match. The highest door card has to post the bring-in, and the player showing the lowest hand acts first on every street after that. Cards you’d throw back in Hold’em (a 3, a 4, a 5) are the ones you want.

30-second cheat sheet

• Antes, no blinds. Two cards down, one up, then three more up, then one last down. Five streets, best five of seven.
• Lowest hand wins the whole pot. No qualifier.
• Aces are low. Straights and flushes don’t count against you. Pairs do.
• Best hand: A-2-3-4-5, the wheel (also called the “bicycle”).
• Third street: the highest door card brings it in, and K♠ is the automatic bring-in. Later streets: the lowest board acts first.
• Limit game: small bet on third and fourth street, big bet on fifth, sixth and seventh.

Full rules

The deal

Everyone antes. Two cards face down, one card face up. That up card is your door card.

Street by street

1. Third street. The player showing the highest door card posts the bring-in, a forced partial bet. Aces are low here, so the king is the highest card. If the highest door cards tie, suits decide: spades are highest, then hearts, diamonds, clubs. K♠ always brings it in. The bring-in player may instead complete it to a full small bet. Action goes clockwise from the bring-in. Small bet.
2. Fourth street. Everyone still in gets one up card. The player whose up cards make the lowest hand acts first, and may check or bet. A pair among your up cards makes your board worse than any unpaired board. Small bet. A pair on the board gives no one the right to make a big bet, even in rooms where that applies in Stud high.
3. Fifth street. Another up card. Lowest board acts first. Big bet from here on.
4. Sixth street. Another up card. Lowest board acts first. Big bet.
5. Seventh street. The last card comes face down, so you finish with three hidden cards and four showing. Lowest board acts first. Big bet. Then showdown.

Up to eight can play. If all eight make it to seventh street and the deck has run out, the dealer deals a single community card face up that everyone uses as their seventh card.

What you play

You choose the best five of your seven cards. If you have a pair, you pick five cards of different ranks if you can. You only play a pair if you have fewer than five different ranks.

Ace-to-five ranking, also called California low:

• The ace is always low.
• Straights and flushes are ignored. 5-4-3-2-A is the best hand even if it’s a straight flush.
• Pairs count against you. Any unpaired hand beats any hand with a pair, and the lowest pair is two aces.
• You compare from the highest card down. The best hand is 5-4-3-2-A, then 6-4-3-2-A, 6-5-3-2-A, 6-5-4-2-A, 6-5-4-3-A, 6-5-4-3-2, 7-4-3-2-A, and so on. 7-6-4-3-A beats 7-6-5-2-A.

Showdown

Lowest hand takes the entire pot. Ties split it. The dealer announces pairs when they first show up on board, but never face-card pairs. Same stud procedure as everywhere else: turning up your up cards when facing a bet is a fold, and a hand with more than seven cards is dead.

Rooms disagree

• Raise cap. WSOP: a bet and up to four raises, with a completed bring-in not counting. Robert’s Rules and Pagat: three raises.
• Tied low boards. WSOP and Robert’s: the tied player closest to the dealer’s left acts first. TDA tournament rules: the hand with the high card by suit starts the betting. Pagat’s home tradition: compare suits of the highest cards (♣6 on board beats ♦6). This page follows the WSOP.
• Odd chip. WSOP and TDA: highest card by suit among the five cards in the winning hand. Robert’s: lowest card by suit. This page follows the WSOP.
• Open pair on fourth street. Every source agrees it does nothing in Razz.
• Kansas City Razz. The WSOP rules text uses that name for a version where 7-5-4-3-2 is best and straights and flushes count against you. That is a different game: see 2-7 Razz.

Worked examples

The suited wheel

A suited wheel is still the nuts

Alice

• 5-4-3-2-A low✓ wins

Bob

• 6-4-3-2-A low

Alice scoops the whole pot.

Alice has A-2-3-4-5, all hearts. In high poker that’s a monster, and in Razz it’s the best hand possible, with the flush and the straight completely ignored. Bob has 6-4-3-2-A. That’s a very good hand and it loses, because 5 beats 6 at the top.

Compare from the top

Both have a six-low, so you compare the next card down

Alice

• 6-4-3-2-A low✓ wins

Bob

• 6-5-3-2-A low

Alice scoops the whole pot.

Both players make a six-low. Alice’s pair of aces doesn’t matter because she plays A-2-3-4-6, five different ranks. Bob plays A-2-3-5-6. Both have a 6 at the top, so you look at the next card down: Alice’s 4 beats Bob’s 5. Alice wins.

The pair trap

Queen-high beats a pair of aces

Alice

• Pair of Aces (paired low)

Bob

• Q-J-T-9-2 low✓ wins

Bob scoops the whole pot.

Alice has aces, twos and threes, plus a four. She only has four different ranks, so she has to play a pair, and the best she can make is something like A-A-2-3-4. Bob also has a pair (nines), but he has five different ranks and doesn’t need it: he plays Q-J-T-9-2. Queen-high is an awful hand, but it beats any pair.

How you’ll embarrass yourself

• Expecting straights and flushes to count. They don’t. The wheel is the nuts whether it’s suited or not.
• Playing the ace high. It never is. A-A is the lowest pair, but it’s still a pair.
• Playing cards above an 8 from the start. PokerNews notes experienced players fold three-card hands that contain a card higher than an 8 in an eight-handed game.
• Ignoring dead cards. The cards your opponents show are gone from the deck. A 3-4-5 board with a lot of 3s, 4s and 5s showing in other hands is weaker than it looks, because the cards you want to draw are already out.
• Calling off with the bring-in. You were forced to post it. You weren’t forced to continue. A king or queen door card is usually a hand to fold.
• Never stealing. When the bring-in is a high card and you’re showing a low one, completing the bet and picking up the antes is a standard Razz play (PokerNews, Wikipedia).

Lore and reputation

Wikipedia says Razz is among the oldest poker forms, played since the early 1900s, and a WSOP bracelet event since 1971 (first winner Jimmy Casella, at $10,000). It has run every year since, except 1972. ESPN televised the event in 2004 (T.J. Cloutier won), which Wikipedia credits with kicking off an online razz boom.

PokerNews says its popularity faded in the 1990s and early 2000s, and that the rise of mixed games and HORSE brought it back. Haney (Card Player, 2026) says razz was “considered a dying game” 30 years ago, and that a $1,500 WSOP razz event now draws about as many players as a $1,500 limit hold’em event. He says it is not very popular in home games or low and medium-stakes mixed cash games, where Razzdeucey and Razzdugi are preferred.

A frequent criticism, from Greg Raymer, is that the bring-in is almost always dead money. That led to Action Razz.