Play Badugi Poker Online

During a recent trip to Las Vegas I was surprised to see how many different casinos include Badugi in their mixed games. Even small ones had it, for example each Sunday night Imperial Palace offers a $3/$6 mixed game and sure enough Badugi is one of the games on the rotation. While this game is a major hit in live mixed games, it hasn’t quite caught on in the online poker world just yet and the only online poker rooms that offer it are Carbon Poker and the other rooms on that same network.

If you’re not familiar with Badugi, it a four card triple draw lowball game of Korean origin and is sometimes spelled Badougi, Paduki or Padooki. The goal is to make the best low card hand, however in this game the ranking system is different than that of traditional lowball poker. The goal of the game is to try and obtain one card of each suit with no pairs; a hand that accomplishes this is called a Badugi.

Play Badugi Online at Carbon Poker

At showdown if more than one player has a Badugi the player with the lowest Badugi wins the pot. Ace is always low and there are no such thing as straights in the game, therefore A-2-3-4 all in different suits is the nuts (best possible hand).

If no player has Badugi this means they have either a three card or a two card hand. This is because pairs or two cards of the same suit can not be used to make a hand.

Examples:
Ad-4d 3h 2s is an “A-2-3 Three Card Low” because the four is the same suit as the lower ace of diamonds; diamonds can’t be used twice so the four is excluded. Likewise AdAs2c2h is an “A-2 two card low”.

If no player has Badugi the best three-card low hand wins at showdown. If no player has a three card hand then the best two-card low wins at showdown.

Betting Structure: The betting structure is the same as Texas Holdem and Omaha where there is a forced small and big blind left to the dealer button. Betting action rotates around the board the same as it would in these other mentioned games.

Players start with four cards and then have a round of betting. There are then three rounds of draws with a betting round to follow each draw. During the draw players are able to discard any number of cards to have them replaced with new ones, or of course can also stand pat (take/discard zero cards). After the round of betting that follows the third draw is complete each player shows their cards and the pot is awarded to the winner.