Unless you are in a steal position, you should tend to play these hands only when your cards are completely live. Playing Guidelines – 3rd Street in an Unopened Pot Next month’s article will focus on playing medium pairs that are playable due to having a straight flush kicker. This article will attempt to build on that discussion and will focus on situations where these hands are playable due to the fact that you have a large kicker. The book provides some tremendous guidance on how to play small and medium pairs profitably. It’s an older book but still highly relevant to how the games are played today. Seven Card Stud for Advanced Players by Sklansky, Malmuth, and Zee is a top notch resource on the game of Stud. Others may fold them too much and thus miss out on many potential profitable situations. Many players play them too often and passively and end up leaking money. Small and medium pairs are very tricky hands to play in Seven Card Stud. How well you play the marginal hands is crucial to how you perform in any variant of poker.

Run of seven card game