7 card stud poker - Third round play

The most critical point of seven-card stud is following the deal of the fifth card but prior to the third round betting. As a player you have now received five of the seven cards that are now available to you, and therefore are in possession of two thirds of your hand.

You can also see three of the four cards that your opponents will expose. The two rounds of betting that lie ahead will almost surely be larger than the previous ones. Thus while your information is mostly complete, the investment you will have to make to see a showdown is not. Now is the time to be ruthlessly realistic in balancing you chances of winning against the cost of staying in.

At this point there are no absolutes, only educated guesses: a pair of kings may be either a good hand or a sure loser and the same is true of a straight. Everything now depends on the cards you have seen. In light of this you must form a judgement about what help, if any, you need to achieve a hand good enough to stay in with until the showdown. You will have seen enough cards by this point for you to be able to count quite precisely how many of the remaining cards will give you such a hand.