Baduci – Badeucy

Baduci, sometimes referred to as Badeucy or Badeucey, is one of the newer games out there, but is also a game that is quickly growing in terms of popularity in the poker world.  The idea behind this game is that it is a combination of badugi, and deuce to seven triple draw.  The pot is split, which is similar to a hi-lo game, with half of the pot going to the best made badugi hand, and the other half going to the best made deuce to seven triple draw hand.  Each player is dealt five total cards, but only four of those are used to determine the badugi hand; while all five will be used for the deuce to seven hand.  In this game, players are only allowed to trade a max of three cards during each drawing round as well.  So overall, this game is quite a bit different than any other game out there currently.

Base Play

 Each player beings with five cards being dealt to them face down.  In baduci there is a small blind and a big blind, just like in a regular draw game.  Each player must decide if they want to fold, call, or raise, starting with the player to the left of the big blind.  Once the first round of betting is done, each player will draw however many cards they want up to three.  After this draw, there is then a second round of betting, followed up with another draw for the remaining players.  At this point there would be a round of betting, and the final draw of the hand.  After the final draw is finished, all players take part in the last round of betting, and then show their hands.

Reading Your Hand

The toughest part of this game is the fact that you are attempting to make two different hands at one time.  With badugi, you only need to use four cards out of the five, but the idea is to get the lowest four cards that you can with all different suits (and no pairs).  If you get a duplicate suit or a pair, the highest suit would be eliminated, and one of the two pair cards would be eliminated, depending on which situation arises.  Any four card badugi hand will beat a three card badugi hand as well.  Aces are considered low when making a badugi hand.

On the other side of things, you are trying to make the best deuce to seven triple draw hand as well, and for this type of hand you will be using all five cards.  All straights and flushes do count in this game, meaning that a hand like 2-3-4-5-6 of different suits would be good for badugi (half of the pot), but not good for the deuce to seven triple draw hand.  When creating this hand, aces are considered high , meaning that the best deuce to seven hand that you could make is exactly as the name of the game states- 2-3-4-5-7.

Strategy

So the idea of this game is to try to make the best two hands that you can out of these five cards, which would be 2d-3h-4c-5s-7d.  This hand would guarantee the win of the deuce to seven triple draw half of the pot, and would put you in an excellent position to win the badugi hand as well (the only hand that could beat you would be an ace high badugi).  When it comes to playing baduci, the best thing to do is to play very tight and pick your spots.  You always want to attempt to put yourself in the best position before the first draw to possibly take at least half of the pot, if not the entire thing.