The Definitive Guide to Playing Badugi

By Ryan Eccles – http://www.badugiplayer.com

Intro.

This guide won't have you beating the biggest games in Vegas tomorrow but it will put you light years
ahead of 99% of the players out there... With Badugi you can still sit down almost anywhere and
you'll be at a good table if only hold'em was still like that!

The Rules

Well we have to start somewhere.

Traditionally played throughout Asia, Badugi is now with the aid of online poker spreading across
Europe and the USA. There is no published literature on the subject; all the usual poker writers have
not yet spread the secrets of the game. So now is clearly a great time to learn!

If like most new players you are coming from a background of Hold’em and Omaha then Badugi will
be most unlike any game you have played before. It is a form of draw poker in which the best hand
contains 4 cards, 4 different suits and the overall lowest combination wins. Aces are low so the best
hand in Badugi is A-2-3-4 of the 4 different suits. If you do not have 4 different suits then your
lowest combination of 3 suits plays eg. A-2-3 is still quite a strong hand and will have showdown
value in lots of situations. In the drawing rounds if you have A-2-3 and everyone else is drawing you
have the nuts so bet aggressively!

Pre Deal
Forced blinds are paid in the same way as Hold’em or an Omaha game. The player to the left of the
dealer will pay the small blind; the next player to the left will then pay the big blind. Badugi is
usually played in limit, pot-limit or half pot limit.

The Deal
Each player is dealt 4 cards face down, starting with the small blind being dealt 1 card and then
dealing continues clockwise until each player has 4 cards. Like Hold’em the first person to act is to
the left of the big blind, if a player wants to play his hand he must either call the amount of the big
blind or raise it. Once every player has had a chance to act then the first draw is dealt.

Each player now has the option to change between 1 and 4 of their cards, which is again dealt face
down. There is then a betting round, the 2nd draw, another betting round, the 3rd draw followed by
the final round of betting. If the last bet is called there is then a showdown in which the player still
in the hand will turn their cards face up. The value of Badugi hands is from the top down so an A-2-
3-K would be beaten by a 5-6-7-Q.

The top 50 x 4 Card Badugi Hands

1. 432A
2. 532A
3. 542A
4. 543A
5. 5432
6. 632A
7. 642A
8. 643A
9. 6432
10. 652A
11. 653A
12. 6532
13. 654A
14. 6542
15. 6543
16. 732A
17. 742A
18. 743A
19. 7432
20. 752A
21. 753A
22. 7532
23. 754A
24. 7542
25. 7543
26. 762A
27. 763A
28. 7632
29. 764A
30. 7642
31. 7643
32. 765A
33. 7652
34. 7653
35. 7654
36. 832A
 37. 842A
38. 843A
39. 8432
40. 852A
41. 853A
42. 8532
43. 854A
44. 8542
45. 8543
46. 862A
47. 863A
48. 8632
49. 864A
50. 8642

Top 20 x 3 Card Badugi Hands

1. 32A
2. 42A
3. 43A
4. 432
5. 52A
6. 53A
7. 532
8. 54A
9. 542
10.543
11.62A
12.63A
13.632
14.64A
15.642
16.643
17.65A
18.652
19.653
20.654

The Game
The general object of the game is to have 4 low cards of 4 different suits, Badugi hands are ranked
from the top down so you want to get rid of high cards as soon as you get them but do not
underestimate the strength of a made Badugi. You can learn your odds of completing draws here:
Badugi Odds Chart

Position is your best friend when you are playing Badugi the information you receive is much more
valuable than your cards, so you should tighten up when you are in an early position & loosen your
ranges when you are last to act.

Basic Strategy
The Texas Hold’em craze is still intact but players are now starting to diversify the games they play,
one of the games now growing in popularity is Badugi. The game itself is shrouded in secrecy; the
usual poker authors have yet to produce any literature on the subject so most people have to teach
themselves. Most poker training sites have been begged to make some new videos/strategy articles
but they have yet to produce the goods.

The Game
Badugi is a drawing game; it’s a little like triple draw low ball with a forced blind structure taken
from Hold’em. If you haven’t already you should read our Badugi Rules article before you continue.
To learn the game of Badugi it’s probably best to just jump right into the smallest game you can find
and play a few hands.

10 Tips for a winning Badugi strategy

1. Early position: Play any 3 cards under a 7.

2. Mid position: Play any 3 cards under a 7 + any 2 cards under a 5.
3. In late position we can loosen our range & should be much more aggressive, we can
comfortably raise with 2 cards under 5 and raise any 3 cards under an 8. We should also be
raising with any Badugi & any of our bluff hands.
4. It is rarely correct to break a pat 9 or T Badugi. It would be better to break a A23K hand than
to break a 89TJ.
5. Short-handed tables with 2-4 players offer better opportunities to bluff.
6. Long handed tables with 5+ players generally see more showdowns but you can quickly work
which players you can bluff into breaking their made hands.
7. Badugi has 3 drawing rounds; you can work out your odds of completing a draw using our
Badugi Odds Chart.
8. Calling down on the end is usually read dependent, which you will pick up with experience.
9. Play tight until you fully understand the game. Jack & Queen high Badugis are much harder
to play but you can work them into your game with experience.
 10.If your opponent draws on the final round and bets out you should consider calling with your
better 3 card hands.

Note Taking
Making notes will drastically improve your game, these are some points you should consider:

• Who is misreading their hands or making other very basic mistakes?

• Who doesn’t bet or raise until they have a Badugi?
• Who value bets their good 3 card hands?
• Who is often folding preflop and frequently draws 1 when he enters a pot? (These players are
playing tight so proceed with caution)
• Who limps into a ton of pots and frequently draws 1 card? (These guys are often drawing to
high Badugi)
• Who has ever been caught in a snow?
• Who has ever tried to pick off a snow, i.e. called a river bet vs someone standing pat on
earlier rounds.
Multi-way Strategy How-to for Badugi
A good friend of mine has asked me to each him how to play Badugi. He is a strong Hold’em player
with a couple of years experience but like most when it comes to Badugi he is a little lost.

So far he knows the rules of Badugi and I have given him some guidelines for starting hands. He
knows the hand rankings and I have shown him the Badugi software post on here. He has started to
play limit Badugi to get a general feel for the game but will be moving on to PL Badugi after he has
played a few thousand hands.

I was reviewing a session for him today and noticed a few spots where he wasn’t playing optimally,
over the next few posts I will be showing you his mistakes and how you can avoid repeating them.

Badugi Multi-way
In multi-way pots he was often folding reasonable 2 and 3 card hands because he thought being out
of position would make him easy to exploit. Well position is very important but what he didn’t realize
is he was getting protection from all the added players in the hand. If 4+ players are seeing the first
draw its very likely someone will complete a Badugi so it becomes more of a pot odds game.

Multi-way bluffing is much less common because players generally realize someone will complete a
Badugi most of the time. Players are much more likely to play in a straight forward manner taking
the huge pot odds they are usually offered to try and scope the big pot in front of them.

Good hands to play multi-way that you would not normally play are hands that need to hit to have
showdown value. An example would be 854 or 765, as 3 card hands these are trash but if you can get
in multi-way their value increases. If you do hit a Badugi make sure you re-raise to protect your
hand, now you don’t want it to be multi-way any longer. Scope that pot!

Latter on when my friend switches to PL Badugi he will have to be much more careful about how he
plays these hands, in general he would be folding them unless the table is particularly passive pre-
flop. Position in PL Badugi is extremely important as now you can actually buy pots & bully the other
players.

Heads-up Pots in Badugi

Our last article focused on multi-way hands so this time I’m going to write about the differences in
how we’d play hands when the pot gets to be heads-up. I’ll start with an example: We are playing
limit Badugi and are on the big blind with the hand Ac3d8s3s:

Situation 1:
The first player to act raises, 3 other people call so we are left with a decision. Our hand is too weak
to re-raise and too strong to fold. The pot is offering us great odds so we decide to call. Now for the
hard part, how many cards should we draw?
We could drop 2 cards and hope to try and make a nut type hand but that won’t really be necessary
to win the pot most of the time. If we are drawing 2 cards it’s even less likely we will make a Badugi
with the first draw, which is when our hand will be most valuable. An 8 low Badugi will scope most of
the time even multi-way, if you lose its just a little bad variance. So we decide to draw 1 card,
hopefully make our hand and win a nice pot.

Situation 2:
The first player to act raises and everyone folds around to you. Now what? Again we are in that
situation too weak to re-raise & too strong to fold so again we call.

How many cards should we draw? An 8 high Badugi would win HU most of the time as well but what
you should realize is that more often than not a good 3 card Badugi will win in HU situations. A38 has
no showdown value HU so this time we will change 2 cards hoping to make a good 3 card hand early.
If we don’t then its no huge loss, our implied odds were good but it didn’t work out.

If we are playing PL Badugi situation 2 would be an instant fold since we are showing so much
weakness it makes it very easy for the villain in the hand to put pressure on us. Situations like this
make for a good snow attempt.

Snowing: This is when a player will stand pat and bluff that they have a made Badugi. There will be
an article on snowing in the very near future so stay tuned.

Making it RAIN with SNOW!

Snowing in Badugi
It’s a bit late to be dreaming of a white Christmas but when you play Badugi it’s snowing all around
you.

I’ll start off with explaining what a snow actually is.A snow is the term used in draw poker when a
player without a made hand stands pat & doesn’t draw any further cards.What is this lunacy you ask?
Well the idea is to deceive your opponents into thinking you have a made hand so you can steal a
pot. If it works then celebrate! We are immediately better off but if we get looked up that’s still
good for us in the long term.

If our snow is unsuccessful and we do get to showdown our opponents will now be put off balance.
They will be forced to call us down more often because if they don’t adjust we can rob them blind.

The vast majority of players don’t snow enough and some pick some really horrible places to do it.I’ll
highlight some situations were you can pick up lots of chips and confuse your foes on the table.

Pre-draw when you pick up 4 suited cards.

At first glance you will think 5h6h8h9h is a horrible hand to play in Badugi, but with a little
imagination it can still be highly profitable.

You won’t get 4 cards of the same suit very often so adding them to our snow range will make us
much harder to read (because we will be bluffing randomly when we get them). We also get the
added benefit of it being that much harder for our opponents to complete their hand.Not all of the
time but it will still have an effect:

As an example our opponent has Ac3s7d so they are looking for a heart to make a Badugi. Against a
typical opponent he is looking to make a J or better Badugi before he is willing to showdown against
a pre-draw pat hand.

Our villan has 10 outs to make a Badugi (the 2h,4h,5h,6h,8h,9h,Th,Jh,Qh,Kh) they will generally
discount the Kh & Qh leaving them with 8 outs. However since we have 4 of their cards in our hand
they are now drawing to only 4 outs!

Even if your opponent will chase all 3 draws he will only have a 23% chance of making his hand.Which
means our snow would work 77% of the time. aUsually most opponents will fold if they haven’t hit by

the 2nd draw so that further increases our chance of winning to 84% Only one word is needed to
describe this situation & that word is “KERCHING!*”

Against weakness.
Did your opponent just draw 2 cards on the 2nd draw.Now is a great time to consider snowing, your
opponent is weak, HE knows it, YOU know it.Lets take this pot down now, stand pat & bet out. Your

opponent will almost definitely fold now or after the 3rd draw.

When not to snow

If there have been re-raises on the 1st or 2nd draw your opponent is telling you he likes his hand.If

you were to stand pat on the 3rd draw & try to steal you will get looked up a lot.

If your opponent ever stands pat & checks the snow attempt is over.They have made a weak Badugi
but are reluctant to fold, just check & showdown remember its good to get caught every once in a
while.

As you can see snowing is a very powerful weapon so make sure you add it to your game when you
play Badugi.

* Originates from north Korea, translates to “make lotto money”

Continued.....
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