7-Card Stud: The Waiting Game
Patience is more than a virtue in seven-card stud, it is an absolute necessity.
Having the discipline to wait to get a read on your opponents is a key skill for any player with dreams of making a final table at the World Series of poker. Two top tournament seven-stud players, Joe Awada and John "The Razor" Phan, showed us.
John and Joe both made the final table of 2005's $5,000 stud event at the WSOP, and Joe won the event in 2004. John, who owns 12 tournament titles, won the stud event at the World Poker Finals in 2004.
"You have to be really patient and try to sit there and focus on which player plays which cards, and who is aggressive and who is weak," Phan explains. "There are some players who are very obvious where you can really see that they are bluffing or on a draw. That's one good edge about stud. A lot of pros are successful at it because they read other players so well."
You also must be very selective about when to put your foot on the gas in a tournament. "I'm an aggressive player when I play the game, but I try to earn respect first, not force the respect," says Awada. "I try to earn the respect and then become a little more aggressive, but of course, you do play every player or every individual differently. There are others you could be more aggressive against. You have to be careful because you may have to show a hand. You need to watch and play everybody different. You need to have a good memory, be able to remember all the cards that have come and gone. Based on that, then you make a decision."
Phan agrees. "I would say play aggressively half and half. Be aggressive when you need to be and when you don't need to be aggressive, don't. In stud you have to be really patient. Pick your spots. If you think you can outplay somebody, power-play your player when he is weak. There are a lot of weak players so just be aggressive with them. Against a strong, aggressive player you have to play a little tighter and wait for them to make a mistake. Make them give you a big pot. Raise them on the river and make them pay you off."
Awada remembers a crucial hand from 2005's event. Patience was key in this hand because he didn't get over-aggressive with it. Instead, he let his opponent bet into him. "I held pocket aces," he says, "and my opponent was pushing mostly (betting aggressively) and I let him lead on. On fifth street I check-raised him and he called with just an AK-high."
Sometimes you need the patience of s saint to wait for the right hand to make a move with. The pros say to avoid getting a lot of money into the pot with a hand that isn't made. "I make sure that I don't chase straights and flushes much in stud. It will just lead to no good," Awada reveals. "Pretty much, just play solid poker. Not chasing is really the secret in that."
Phan says that in stud, you need a genuine hand to take the pot much more often than in Hold'em. "Stud is a patience game. You can't try to make moves and outplay someone, you have to have something. It's not like hold'em where any two cards are good. You can't just have nothing and come in all the time."
Many player have been focusing on perfecting their stud game because of the huge number of entrants in Hold'em tournaments these days. The large fields don't make Awada play any differently, though.
"You play your game and hope to advance from that particular table. You can't really worry about who's playing or how many players are playing. You just go on and play your game and that's about all you should really worry about. There are so many other things, if you worry about that it's just going to cause you trouble. You want to be relaxed and just try to focus on who the weak player is in the game and take advantage of him."
Of course, winning a big event requires luck, as well as skill. "I do a lot of praying for good luck, other than that you just come prepared to play," Awada says. "I know one thing, it doesn't matter who you are, you can never play your best game every time in every tournament. You just have to hope your mentality is right for that particular event and you hope that you don't run into bad luck."