Badugi

Badugi is a variation of the card game draw poker. Each player is dealt four cards of a 52-card deck. Badugi is usually played in the format Triple Draw, but can also be played with only one swap round.

Regulate

Just like in Triple Draw there are at Badugi a round of betting, followed by three alternating exchange rounds and rounds of betting. As with the variant Texas Hold'em is played with blinds. A player ( dealer ) receives the dealer button, the player left of the dealer posts the small blind and the next player placing the big blind, which is usually double the small blind. The player left of the big blind starts the first betting round. Badugi can be played with all common types of limits. In the version limit is usually played in the second round swap with the double use. After the last round of betting are still several players in the hand, there is a showdown and the hands involved are counted. The player with the best hand wins the pot.

Rating

The rating of the hands is based on the valuation variant Lowball, with the following differences:

• The hand consists of four instead of five cards.
• For the rating include only cards of different color and different value.

If you have paired cards or more cards of the same color on the hand is one of the cards removed until one only holds different cards with different colors on hand. If there are several ways to delete cards, is the best possible hand counted, which is possible. A Badugi hand can thus consist of four, three, two, or even a map. It always wins the hand that holds more cards, and the same number of cards the better low hand. Therefore, 4-3 -2-A is the best possible hand in Badugi four different colors.

Examples

• 9 ♠ 7 ♣ 4 ♦ 3 ♥ J ♥ 3 ♦ against A ♣ 2 ♠: The first hand will win because she is the better low hand, because a 9 -low beats the J -low the second hand.
• 8 ♦ 3 ♣ A ♥ A ♠ K ♦ J ♣ against 9 ♠ 4 ♥: The second hand will win, because it consists of four cards in the first hand one of the aces is deleted, so that it consists of only three cards.
• K ♥ K ♣ 7 ♣ 5 ♦ K ♦ K ♠ against 3 ♦ 2 ♠: The first hand will win, because the K ♣ deleted to the three-card hand K ♥ 7 ♣ 5 ♦ to form in the second hand must be eliminated both kings, and thus we obtain the two-card hand 3 ♦ 2 ♠.

Importance

Badugi is played in private rounds of some well known poker professionals in passing. One can in some online poker rooms also play Badugi, but it is not so widespread variant of Texas Hold'em or Omaha Hold'em and is not played in the big poker tournaments like the WSOP or EPT.

Online Badugi is played more and more. Thus, in the WCOOP has also played a Badugi event in 2010 (World Championship of Online Poker).

Greg Raymer has a variant of Chinese poker for three players developed in which the usual hands added a Badugi hand.