1. Sep 09, 2011 RealKidPoker Daniel Negreanu The mix: Badugi, 2-7 3draw, Razzdacey, Badeucey, Hold'em, 2-7 Razz, 2-7 NLH single draw, Omaha 8, Badacey Razzbadeucy.
2. Badugi is part of the draw poker family, i.e. Those poker games where you have to draw cards; Badugi is quite similar to Triple Draw Poker. There are some fundamental differences, though: Badugi is a so-called ‘lowball’ game (i.e. A game where the player with the lowest-ranking hand wins) where the ace is low only (i.e. It always counts as.

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• Poker Variations Badugi Rules

Badugi is a poker-like game played with four-card hands. To win the pot at the showdown you need to have the lowest set of cards with no two cards of the same rank or suit, ace ranking low. The best possible hand is therefore A-2-3-4 with one card of each suit.

Go Badugi

Badugi is part of the draw poker family, i.e. those poker games where you have to draw cards; Badugi is quite similar to Triple Draw Poker. There are some fundamental differences, though: Badugi is a so-called ‘lowball’ game (i.e. a game where the player with the lowest-ranking hand wins) where the ace is low only (i.e. it always counts as 1); the aim of the game is to build the lowest possible, off-suit hand. In order to reach this, players may swap cards up to four times. If you want to play Badugi online we recommend PokerStars. Sign up through BonusBonusBonus and get a special welcome bonus.

Badugi - crash course

At the very beginning of each Badugi game, the two players who sit next to the dealer (the person marked with the dealer button) have to place their blinds. This happens before the cards are dealt. The blinds are there to make sure that there is money in the pot so every winning hand can actually win money. Since the dealer button moves on clockwisefrom player to player with each round of the game, every player has to pay a blind at some point during the game. The player to the left of the dealer places the Small Blind, the player to his left has to place the ‘Big Blind’ which is usually twice the amount of the small blind.

Cards and 1st betting round

As soon as all players have paid their blinds, each player is dealt four cards face down. Now, starting with the first player after the big blind, players may decide whether they would rather fold, call or raise. If you have a nice hand to start with, it is recommendable to start raising right away because as soon as you do not exchange any cards in the first exchange round, the other players will be warned.

1st exchange of cards and 2nd betting round

Each player may now exchange up to all of his cards and after this, there is another betting round where the first player to the left of the dealer button has to start betting.

2nd exchange of cards and 3rd betting round

Again each player has the possibility of exchanging up to four of his cards, this is followed by yet another betting round where – again – the first player to the left of the dealer button hast to start betting.

3rd exchange of cards and 4th betting round

Now players may exchange cards for one last time, followed by a last betting round which is again started by the first player to the left of the dealer button.

Showdown

During the showdown the winner is determined i.e. the player with the best badugi hand (i.e. as low as possible, no pairs, preferably four different suits) receives the pot. Should two player’s hands have the same value, they share the pot, suit does not matter. For example: one player has A, 2, 4, 5 and another A, 2, 3 and 5 (obviously always made up of cards of different suits), in this case the second player wins because of the one card the two players do not have in common, he holds the lower one. One special rule in Badugi says that a player who has two cards of the same suit at the point of showdown, has to discard the higher one and stay in the game with only a three-card badugi hand, a four-card badugi hand always wins over a three-card badugi hand. So, if player #1 has A♠, 6♣, 10♥ and J♦, he beats player #2 who has 2♣, 10♣, 5♥ and 8♠, because player #2 has to discard his 10♣ and is thus left with only three cards. The same rule is also applied to situations where a player holds a paired card at showdown because in that case he, too, has to discard one of them. Both rules explained above obviously also apply to situations where a player’s hand is only made up of two different suits, or worse, only of one suit. In those cases players might actually be left with only two or even one card.

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If you do not like the cards you were dealt, you have the opportunity to discard (fold) them and thus leave the current round of the game. Should you be big or small blind or should you have called someone’s bet already, you lose the money. Apart from that though, since you have folded, you cannot lose any more money during this round. If you want to keep your cards and stay in the game, you can, for example, check. This means that nobody before you has placed a bet yet and that you do not either. Now the player after you has the opportunity to check himself, or to bet. If any of the players in the round bets, you need to – as soon as it is your turn – decide whether you fold, call or raise. To call means that, in case a player before you has placed a bet, you bet the same amount as he does; you call his bet. If you find you have been dealt decent cards, you can bet a certain amount of money on your hand being the winning hand. If a player before you has already placed a bet, you can raise his bet. Depending on the betting structure the amounts you can bet or by which you may raise, are fixed in online poker rooms.

• Fixed limit: On a $ 5/$ 10 table you may bet $ 5 in the first two betting rounds and up to $ 10 in the last two. In each round players may bet once and raise three times (bet, raise, re-raise and again re-raise or ‘cap’). After three rounds of betting the so-called cap is reached, this means that in this betting round, no more betting can be done. In this case the next card is dealt – or if it was the last round – the showdown begins.

• No limit: Here the betting structure follows these rules: Each player may bet all the money he has on the table, regardless of the size of the pot. As a rule, the minimum bet has to at least equal the amount of the Big Blind and if you decide to raise, your raise does at least have to equal that of the player before you.

• Pot limit: In a pot limit game a player may bet a sum between the minimum bet and the total size of the pot. In a $ 5/$ 10 pot limit game the small blind is $ 5 and the big blind $ 10. The first player could call the big blind (i.e. $ 10 in this case) or raise to any amount up to the total pot size. The raise has to either equal or exceed the previous bet. So in this case, the maximum possible raise would be $ 25 ($ 5 small blind, $ 10 big blind and $ 10 the call) which means that player #3 may actually bet a total of $ 35. So should player #3 raise the pot limit, the total amount in the pot would then be $ 50.
  Now if the next player (let’s say player #4) wants to go on playing, he at least has to call the $ 35, i.e. the bet player #3 has made. Should player #4 want to raise (up) to the pot limit he would have to put $ 120 into the pot. That is the total pot size ($ 50) plus the maximum raise of $ 70 ($ 35 call + $ 35 raise). The number of betting rounds per hand is not limited and in each round calling and raising continues until every player has either called, or folded his cards.

All-In

Primarily, players go ‘All-In’, when they have a particularly good hand. This is because: when one or more other players call this move and the player who went all-in wins anyway, his winnings in this round increase considerably. Another possibility would be, that a player goes all-in to bluff and merely signal that he has a good hand, in order to make the other players fold and win himself the pot. (What the precise rules for an all-in situation are is described in the following paragraph.) Apart from the situation described above, players could also go all-in for the following reason: In case a player lacks the necessary amount of chips to call or finish a hand but has nice cards and wants to stay in the game anyway, he does not have to fold. The player can also go ‘all-in’; so he bets all of his chips (even if they are not sufficient to cover the sum he would actually need to call) and can stay in the game without being able to act any further though. All the money that is in the pot up until the point when he goes all-in, is what the player can win. All money put into the pot after he went all-in is put in a separate pot (‘side pot’). Should the player who is all-in, win the showdown, he wins the main pot, whereas the side pot goes to the player with the second best hand. When a player goes all-in and his fellow players decide to call his bet, they obviously have to call the sum he bet.

Learning by doing

Even after the best of explanations, you still need to practice playing at an online poker table. We have created reviews of the best online poker schools where you can practice your play.

Short history of Badugi Poker

Actually the history of Badugi really is short because this poker variant has only existed for a few years. This triple draw variant was created in Korea and has spread farther into the west in the past few years. In online poker this entertaining and interesting variant has not quite conquered all the tables yet, many people in online poker already see it as the new Texas Hold’em though. Generally, probably due to its relatively high degree of difficulty, Badugi is not a very far spread poker variant and usually not represented at big poker events. There are quite a few famous poker pros who like a good game of Badugi in their spare time though. There is, for example, the Australian poker star Joe Hachem, who has won quite a sum here and there, playing Badugi and enjoys this game very much.

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Introduction

Badugi is a poker-like game played with four-card hands. To win the pot at the showdown you need to have the lowest set of cards with no two cards of the same rank or suit, ace ranking low. The best possible hand is therefore A-2-3-4 with one card of each suit.

There is some controversy over the origin of this game, which has been played at least since the 1980's. Bill Rosmus reports that in the 1980's in Winnipeg, Canada it was played under the name Off Suit Lowball in the back room of pool halls and back room poker clubs. Bryan Micon says he has been told by several Korean players that it was also played in South Korea in the 1980's. L. Michael Riccardi tells me that Badugi is commonly played in prisons in the southern USA, for example in Florida, where it is known as Airborn.

Nick Wedd reports that the Korean word baduk, or badug refers to a black and white pattern. This gives rise to the Korean name baduk for the board game Go, played with black and white stones. In Korea, if you have a black and white pet dog, you might well give it the name 'badugi'. Two high-low games featuring the 'doogie' hand, a low four-card hand consisting of a different ranked card of each suit, were contributed to pagat.com in 2000 by Bob Procter's poker group in North Carolina, and published on pagat.com in 2002: Doogie and Buddys Game. They have suggested that the 'doogie' hand may have been named after the TV character Doogie Howser. Badugi started to become well-known in the USA around 2004, popularised by Paul 'Eskimo' Clark, who was a friend of at least one player from Bob Procter's group.

Any solid information on the history of Badugi or Off Suit Lowball before 1980 would be of great interest in helping to establish how old the game really is, and whether it was invented in Korea or North America, or even independently in both places.

The following explanation of how to play Badugi assumes that you are familiar with the general rules of poker.

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Players, Cards and Hand Ranking

Badugi can be played by from 2 to 8 players, using a standard 52-card pack. The cards rank from Ace (low) up to King (high).

When comparing hands, within each hand all the cards must be different in suit and rank. If a player has more than one card of a suit, or two or more cards of matching rank, some cards must be eliminated to create a valid hand. Examples:

• 5-9-3-J: only one diamond can be used so this is a three-card hand J-5-3.
• 7-4-A-4: only one four can be used so this is also a three-card hand 7-4-A.
• 3-6-8-6: eliminating the 6 makes a valid three-card hand 8-6-3.
• 3-6-8-3: in this case two cards must be removed - a club and a three - leaving a two-card hand 6-3.
• 10-10-10-8: this is another two-card hand 10-8.
• 6-5-4-2: only one heart can be used, so this is a one-card hand: 2.
• 8-K-5-Q: this is is a four-card hand, also known as a badugi, though not a particularly good one K-Q-8-5.

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The rules for comparing hands are:

• Any hand with more cards beats a hand with fewer cards. So a badugi beats any three-card hand, which beats any two-card hand, which beats any one-card hand.
• Between hands with the same number of cards, compare the highest card. The hand with the lower top card is better.
• If the highest cards of equal sized hands are equal, compare the second highest card, and the lower card wins. If these are also equal compare the third highest card (if present), and then the fourth highest.
• If two hands have the same number of cards and the ranks of the cards are the same, the hands are equal. There is no ranking of suits.

Examples:

• 8-7-5-4 beats 9-4-3-2 because 8 is lower than 9.
• 10-7-5-4 beats 10-7-6-A because 5 is lower than 6.
• K-Q-J-8 beats 3-2-A because any four cards beat any three cards.
• If one player has 5-3-5-3 and another has K-Q-3-5 their hands are equal. These both reduce to two-card hands 5-3. The ranks of the unused cards and the suits of the cards are not considered. If these are the best two hands in the showdown the players split the pot.

The best hand, consisting of A, 2, 3, 4 in four different suits, is sometimes known as “the wheel”.

Deal, Draw and Betting

Badugi can be played as a fixed limit, pot limit or half pot limit game - see the betting page for explanation. As in any poker game, the turn to deal (or to have the dealer button if there is a non-playing dealer) passes clockwise after each hand. If there are more than two players, the player to dealer's left places a small blind, and the next player to the left places a big blind, which is normally twice as big as the small blind. In a 'heads up' (two player) game, the dealer places a small blind and the dealer's opponent a big blind.

The dealer deals four cards to each player, clockwise, face down, one at a time, and the players look at their hands. There is then a betting round, begun by the player to the left of the big blind. The minimum bet is normally equal to the big blind. If none of the other players does more than call, the player who placed the big blind is allowed to bet.

The players have three opportunities to improve their hands by drawing cards. Starting with the first active player to dealer's left, and continuing clockwise around to the dealer, each player states how many cards he or she wishes to exchange, discards that number of cards face down to the muck (discard pile), and is immediately given an equal number of replacement cards face down by the dealer. Players can exchange any number of cards from zero to four: exchanging no cards is known as 'standing pat'.

After each round of drawing, when each active player has had an opportunity to draw cards, there is a new betting round, begun by the first active player to the left of the dealer. There are therefore up to four betting rounds altogether: before the first draw and after each of the three rounds of drawing. In a fixed limit game, the size of the bet doubles after the second draw, so that the third and fourth betting rounds are played with big bets.

Showdown

If at any stage only one active player remains, that player takes the pot without showing any cards.

If there is more than one active player at the end of the last betting round, there is a showdown in which the active players display their cards in turn, beginning with the last player who bet or raised in the final betting round, or with the first active player to dealer's left if all checked in the final betting round.

Players show all four cards, even if because of duplicate ranks or suits they only have a three-card, two-card or one-card hand. The cards speak for themselves, and the holder of the best hand wins the pot. If two or more players tie for best hand they divide the pot equally between them.

Variations

L. Michael Riccardi described the following variations.

Poker Variations Badugi Rules

Progressive Badugi

A qualifying limit is specified in advance, for example that in order to win a showdown a hand must be 'airborn' (i.e. a four-card badugi) with no card higher than a 9. If the showdown stage is reached and no one has a qualifying hand the cards are thrown in, the pot remains, and there is a new deal to all players at the table. The game may be played with a different limit (for example 10) or other qualifying conditions - for example three-card hands with a pair may qualify.

Progressive Badugi with a Buy

The above game is sometimes played in a format where each player has one open card and two opportunities to buy a card at the end. Assuming that the qualifying limit is 9 or lower, the process is as follows:

• The dealer deals one card face up to each player, burning any card that is 10 or higher.
• Three times, the dealer deals one card face down to each player, which is followed by a round of betting.
• At this point each player has one face up and three face down cards. Now each player has two opportunities to improve their hand by buying a card in exchange for one of their cards: the dealer specifies the price to be paid to the pot for buying a card before the start of the game.
• There is then a final round of betting and a showdown.

[The exact buying procedure was not explained to me. Presumably players must see the card on sale before deciding whether to buy it, as it would never be worth paying to exchange for an unknown card.]

Other Badugi web sites

A Badugi strategy guide is available on the playlowballpoker website.