Seven-Card Stud Hi-Lo has been steadily rising in popularity among casino players. It is an intricate version of the original game.

Seven-Card Stud Hi-Lo sounds complicated and difficult but is in fact quite simple to get the hang of. The principle difference between hi-lo games and high only games is that in hi-lo games, the lowest hand gets half the pot (A-2-3-4-5).

A low hand can contain a flush or a straight but no pairs while the highest card permitted in the low part is an eight, as the name Seven-Card Stud Eight-or-Better might suggest. Scooping the pot is a situation in which the same player wins both the high and the low portions. In this regards, the best possible hi-lo hands involves the little ace-to-five straight flush.

The basic rules of the game are more or less the same as those of Seven-Card Hi. A player receives three cards, two of them faced down and one faced up. The hand having the lowest ranked cards starts betting, and once all players have acted, the remaining players receive a fourth card each, faced up. The player having the best two-card starts the game. It continues this way until every player has seven cards, three faced down and four faced up. The best five-card poker hand gets half the pot while the best low hand takes the remaining half. In case there isn't a low hand, then the high hand gets the entire pot.

Seven-Card Stud Hi-Lo is also known as Seven-Card Stud Eight-or-Better as well as Seven-Card Stud 8/B. Its popularity has been given a big boost after it was part of the extremely popular $50,000 buy-in H.O.R.S.E. event that occurred at the World Series of Poker in 2006.

Seven-Card Stud Hi-Lo is a famous high-stakes games played at Bobby's Room in Las Vegas, with blinds ranging between four thousand and eight thousand dollars.