Hi, my name is Jesse Walker, I’m a professional poker player and I admit it, I’m a badugi fanatic. I play badugi for many reasons, but the bottom line is that it is a fun and profitable game of poker that is not difficult to learn to play. So what’s better than what again in poker? A full house beats a flush and a flush beats a straight. Right?
Well, not in badugi! Badugi starts from scratch and reinvents the entire game of poker.
- In badugi you get four cards instead of five.
- Badugi is a type of lowball, which means you’re trying to make the lowest possible hand.
- The best type of hand in badugi is interestingly called “badugi”. It consists of four cards of different suits with no pairs.
- So you’re trying to make a rainbow hand: a heart, club, spade, and diamond with no paired cards.
- Fastballs do not count against you.
- You get three draws to make the best hand you can.
So you can see that if you’re used to Texas Hold’em, or 7-card stud, you can’t jump on the badugi tables and fight back. I know this, and you know it, but (and here’s the fun part) your opponents don’t!
They just jump into the game because they have never heard of it before and are curious. I played a badugi tournament a while back where a player didn’t know you could draw! I played a cash game where a player thought he was playing pot limit omaha and couldn’t figure out why no community cards were being dealt! Suffice it to say that the poker world has yet to discover the game. This is a great opportunity for you and I to jump in and show people how to play (for a price!) As the economists say; ‘there is no such thing as a free lunch’.
Where to play? Well, there’s not much in the way of live play. Some card rooms in Las Vegas offer badugi as part of high-stakes mixed games. But unless you’re a millionaire looking to donate to poker’s elite, that probably won’t interest you. Badugi was part of the World Series of Poker in 2011. So if you have WSOP aspirations, you may play there one day.
By far the fastest and easiest place to play badugi is online (and yes, there are options for American players).
A third option is to create your own game at home. Learn the rules of badugi and invite your 4-5 best friends over for beers and a friendly game. My first badugi party was a great success. Newer players liked it because they didn’t feel at a disadvantage to more experienced hold’em and stud players.
Whichever route you take, I hope you get a chance to play. It is something that all poker enthusiasts should try.