Well,  once you’ve mastered the basic 7 card stud rules,  have read a 7 card stud book or two,  and have started to improve your skills at the table,  you need to work on one other very important stud poker strategy  --  finding a good game.

You see,  your profit at poker,  stud poker or any form of poker for that matter,  comes from the product of a very simple equation:  You take your skill and subtract the average skill of the players around the table.  The net result is your profit.  Simple as that.

As you can see,  there are two parts of this stud poker equation that you can do something about.  The first,  of course,  is to work on your skill.  That means learning the basic rudiments of starting hand requirements,  4th,  5th,  6th and 7th Street play,  psychology,  bluffing,  reading other players,  card memory,  et cetera.  But the other side of the equation,  the easier side in fact,  is learning how to find bad players to play against.  That’s the topic of this article.

Bad players do not walk around the poker room with a sign that says that they are bad.  Nor will the floor direct you to the game with the worst players  (although some floor staff will help point you toward the  “live one”  from time to time).  You should also know that bad players often disguise themselves in the attire and the behavior of the professionals they see on TV and in casinos.  A new player may often mistake the good players for the bad players and vice versa.  So let me give you a few things to look for and a few things to avoid in your opponents.

First of all,  let’s peel away the façade of bad player.  Don’t be fooled by any of the acts you see in a casino.  Players who know the lingo,  throw out poker advice,  comment on the play of others,  act like the table general, hobnob with the poker room staff,  dress with sunglasses and a hat and jacket with a poker room logo are often the worst players in the room.  Don’t be fooled by any of this superficial nonsense.  If they were really the pros they pretended to be,  instead of just wannabes,  why would they be playing at the low stakes games you’re interested in?  If they were really professionals who depended on the mistakes of their opponents to pay their mortgage,  would they be so eager to correct the mistakes of other players?

Instead,  focus entirely on what the players actually do in a hand.  You want games with callers and checkers  --  the more the better.  You want games that have many players left for Fifth Street,  Sixth Street and the River.  And you want games with lots of smiles,  laughs and kidding around.  These are the games with the gamblers and the bad players  --  the games with the loose money and the easy call.  And that’s what you want  --  lots of players tossing in their money,  not afraid to gamble it up,  having a good time and not playing too seriously.

There are some serious players who disagree with this.  They opine that games can have too many bad players.  I’ve read these folks commenting on games with  “too many bad players for a good player to beat.”  These serious players prefer playing against a mix of solid and bad players,  claiming that it’s easier to beat a game where at least some of the players play in the tight/aggressive style of the good player.

Well,  they’re wrong,  at least in the long run.  I’ve done some simulations using an excellent product put out by Wilson Software called Turbo 7-Card Stud.  This is a program that simulates player styles and stud games,  automatically generating hundreds of thousands of hands every couple of minutes with simulated players.  Here’s what I discovered when I ran a few tests.

I ran about 500,000 hands with 8 identical solid player programs.  Figuring a rake of 5% and a maximum of $3,  all of the players lost a fortune after 500,000 hands.  That’s about a lifetime of play for the typical weekly player.  Similarly,  even if you threw in one awful,  loose/passive calling station,  they all lost money.  They lost less money,   sure.  But they lost money nevertheless.  With two loose players a few won a little,  a few lost a little,  and a couple just about broke even.  But as you added in loose players and took out the solid tight/aggressive players,  the games became increasingly more profitable for the good player.  This trend continued all the way until there was only one good player against 7 awful calling stations.  In that sample game the solid player won the most  --  a fortune.  Try it yourself if you’d like.  I’m certain your results will be the same.

The point is this.  Find the game with the largest number of loose/passive players.  That’s where you’ll make your money.

You want to avoid games that have lots of uncontested pots:  where players all fold on Third or Fourth Street.  You want to avoid games with lots of raising and re-raising  --  where two players contest the pot until the River.  You want to avoid games where players tend to either raise or fold  --  and games where players look and act as if they’re at a funeral.  You see six or seven guys sitting at the table with their arms folded and frowns,  look around for another place to play.