So far, all the games we’ve seen have been either well-known or fairly self-explanatory. Now we get to one of the weirdest games in the format, Badugi. Although it’s popular in east Asia (particularly in South Korea) and available on PokerStars, it has never really caught on in the west, except in mixed games and high stakes cash play.
Badugi is really the strange beast of the poker world for one reason: it is, to my knowledge, the only variant which does not use the standard hierarchy of poker hands, from high card up to straight flush. Although lowball and hi/lo games reverse the hierarchy, the A-5 variants omit straights and flushes, and some wild-card games add new hand types, the basic structure of the hand ranks is just about immutable… except for Badugi.
That fact aside, Badugi is mechanically identical to the Triple Draw Lowball games, so it isn’t a particularly hard game to learn, though it does throw some strategic curveballs for those who want to master it. As you would guess from the name, Badugi is also the foundation for the split pot lowball games Badacy and Baducy, which we will cover next week.
Rules
Aside from resolving the showdown, Badugi is played virtually identically to Triple Draw. Players are dealt four cards each, rather than five, and the players to the left of the dealer button post a small and a big blind. There are four rounds of betting (two small and two big) with three drawing rounds in between. As usual, players can exchange some, all or none of their cards in each drawing round.
That brings us to the showdown. Badugi hands work similarly to A-5 Lowball hands, except that you can only use a set of cards which are all different from one another in both rank and suit. Thus, Ac-3d-5s-5h and Ac-2c-3d-5s are identical in value; in both cases, your showdown hand is Ac-3d-5s. You can’t use both Fives in the first example, nor can you use both the Ace and Deuce of Clubs in the second.
A valid four-card hand (called a “badugi”) beats any three-card hand, regardless of ranks (and a three-card beats a two-card, which beats a one-card). Between two hands of the same number of cards, A-5 lowball rules apply: the highest card is considered first (with lower being better), with ties then broken by the second-highest and so on. So A-3-4-5 beats A-3-4-6, which beats A-2-5-6, which beats A-3-5-6.
The best possible hand, then, is A-2-3-4 with all four suits.
Game strategy
The biggest and most significant difference between Badugi and any other lowball game is just how hard it is to form a full four-card hand. When drawing one card in A-5, you are far more likely not to make a pair than you are to make one. It’s therefore very easy to make some kind of high-card hand by showdown.
In Badugi, meanwhile, it’s much harder to hit a draw. Drawing one, there aren’t only three cards you have to miss, but three suits as well. Ignoring discards and guesses at other players’ holdings, there are 48 cards you could draw and only 9 that form a badugi for you.
The two main consequences of this are that when everyone is drawing, showdowns are often won by the best three-card hand, and that any badugi, no matter how high, is a potentially playable hand until you have cause to believe someone has hit a better one. One important statistic to keep in mind is that a player drawing one on every street is about 50/50 to hit some kind of badugi by showdown, so no badugi is an underdog heads up against a single drawing opponent.
So, you would never consider entering a pot in A-5 lowball with a 2-7-9-J-K starting hand, but a King-high badugi may be worth opening with in late position. However, like any lowball game, you do not want to be drawing to a weak badugi, as you will then lose lots of chips if both you and your opponent hit. Generally speaking, aside from pat badugis, good starting hands include three cards to a 7-high badugi or better, or two cards to a 5-high, but your exact range will depend on your position and the action to you.
Starting hand requirements aside, the rest of the hand plays similarly to other lowball games, with the caveat that as long as everyone else is drawing, you will usually keep any badugi you hit, given how difficult they are to make.
Where things get really interesting, however, is when multiple people stand pat. Since there are a huge number of possible badugis, the question now becomes who has the best one.
Because any badugi is potentially playable as a starting hand, but only draws to a very low one are worth trying for, the first rule of thumb is that a drawn badugi will almost always be better than one which was dealt pat. This means that a player who started with a badugi will often want to fold if someone else appears to have hit one, by raising and/or standing pat. That, in turn, means that badugi involves a lot more bluffs (and bluff catching) than most lowball games. In order not to be taken advantage of, you have to both be willing to raise and stand pat with a three-card hand against a pat opponent to make him fold, and to occasionally call down in that situation with a bad badugi, in order to keep your opponents honest. In a small pot, you can also pat-bluff a drawing opponent, if it will make him think he no longer has correct odds to continue.
To a lesser extent, the same principle applies to badugis hit later in the hand vs. ones which were hit earlier. It’s fairly easy to improve a non-nut three card hand without making a badugi (for instance from A-3-7 to A-3-5), and so draws tend to become stronger as the hand goes on, and the resulting badugis as well when those draws hit.
The final twist is the possibility of breaking a badugi. Sometimes you will be dealt (or draw) a badugi such as A-3-4-Q. Such a hand is flexible in that it can be turned into a drawing hand at any moment by throwing away the Q and hoping to make a better badugi. Although it’s important to consider this option when it appears someone has outdrawn you, it does open the door to a new kind of bluffing. In games between competent players, you will occasionally see one player stand pat against a pat opponent, only to resume drawing on a later street. The idea here is that the bluffing player has a very strong draw – typically an A-2-3 – and is hoping to convince the other player to break a weak badugi. Once the badugi is broken, the A-2-3 is no longer a bluff, but probably the best hand; the player will resume drawing just in case his opponent manages to make a new badugi, but is now betting his A-2-3 for value and expecting to win a showdown most of the time.
Selection strategy
There are two main reasons why badugi would make a good pick. Firstly, it is likely to be one of the least familiar games to most amateur players. Assuming you’re comfortable with it yourself, it would be a good game to choose first against a table of unknown opponents, since because you’ve identified anyone’s weaknesses, you have a better chance of seeing poor play than with one of the less exotic options.
Secondly, it involves much more creative play and bluffing than the other lowball draw games, and arguably more even than the flop games. It’s therefore a very high-skill variant, and a good pick if you feel you are the best player at the table, or there are multiple straightforward players that you can potentially take advantage of through pat bluffs, semibluffs and other tricks.
One other consideration is that it is a fairly high-variance game. Not only is there a tendency to get locked into your drawing hands in the same was as you do in the Triple Draw games, but you also have to call down a lot of possible bluffs, and it can be extremely expensive to hit a good badugi against an even better one. The 50/50 statistic for a heads-up contest between a bad badugi and a good draw is also a big source of variance.
Variance can, of course, be a good or bad thing depending on the situation. When conserving chips is your priority, you may want to avoid Badugi as much as possible. On the other hand, when you’re in a position to bully, it can be a great pick, especially given the bluffing options you’ll have at your disposal.
Up Next: Badacy/Baducy
The Dealer’s Choice series runs weekly, with one game (or pair of related games) explained every Tuesday. If you’d like to start from the beginning, click here.
Alex Weldon (@benefactumgames) is a freelance writer, game designer and semipro poker player from Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
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