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How to Play Badugi

How to Play Badugi

How to play Badugi? What it is this Budagi you speak of and where did it come from? If these are questions you have asked in puzzlement then this article is for you.

The game Badugi is a very fun and addictive game that has recently over the last few months become available on the biggest pokersite online, PokerStars.

Until recently PokerStars only offered Texas Hold’Em as the main game but recently they started to offer Badugi as well. Badugi is a hugely popular game which is a variant of Three-Card Poker that uses very special rules that essentially make it not do anything to the odds and actually increases them in favor of the player.

Many people online and around the world have started to aggressively exploit the game and in effect everything you would expect to calculate and take away the edge from the house by knowing the odds I think it is fair to say that almost nobody knows how to play Badugi.

Knowing Badugi Odds

You can’t directly take the odds of Badugi and use them to calculate the odds of your hand winning. The reason for this is that it is essentially a game of chance and a game of luck. That is a common enough explanation for why people don’t win money playing poker but then again the game is not a pure game of luck.

The critical component to understand how to play DewaGG is to understand the way the hand is played. Basically there are two major ways to win a hand of Badugi that we have to understand. The first is with the highest card which is the royal flush. The second is with the lowest card which is the low.

We will start with the highest card first. If you have no cards above the ace then you will need to think very hard before you draw any cards but if you hit the king and ace then you will likely win. The cards that are dealt face up are the ones that are the most powerful. You can hit the royal flush with any card. The odds are low but when you do hit the king and ace you will likely win.

Drawing to the Royal Flush

The idea is to draw to the royal flush. This is where you have the ten, jack, queen, king and ace all of the same suit. There are four humps in Badugi. The first snag is that you will likely need to hold approximately fifty-fifty cards. There is a chance of a tie and your money will go to the highest card. Odds are not too much of a challenge in this type of draw but a lot of people enjoy this method more.

The Badugi Algorithm

For the algorithm of Badugi we need to understand the way cards are dealt. The goal is to create a Badugi hand so that you have the highest card and a Badugi hand will win. Each hand is played in the following manner.

  1. Royal Flush – This is the highest card. You will need the 10, Jack, Queen, king and ace in your hand.
  2. Straight flush – This is getting the next three cards in the order. However this does not include the first card.
  3. Four of a kind – This is when you have 4 cards of the same denomination.
  4. Full house – This is when you have 3 cards of the same denomination and also 2 cards of the same denomination.
  5. Flush – This is when you have 5 cards that are the same suit.
  6. Straight – This is when the cards are in the sequence in the order of the cards. However, this is not a straight as such as the sequence of 5, 6, 7, 8, 9.
  7. Three of a Kind – This is when you have 3 cards of the same denomination.
  8. Two Pairs – This is when you have 2 pairs of cards of the same denomination.
  9. One Pair – This is when you have 1 pair of cards of the same denomination.
  10. High Card – The most valuable card in Badugi is the Ace. Its strategic to never play a hand that involves the Ace. When you are playing Badugi, if you have the Ace, you are in a Badugi.

Another way of the game is by not betting on any of the pairs. You will still need to hit a pair to win a hand and this is one of the odds. If you are not sure of the pair you are holding, you can check the board, which is not previously shared. This is useful during the learning curve.

The concept is all about attention to your cards, which could perhaps be a little simplistic, but is actually a reasonable assumption to make.