Badugi – Everything You Wanted to Know and More

Badugi is a form of triple draw lowball that uses four cards instead of five and has its own unique ranking system. In Badugi, for a card to be considered part of the hand, it needs to be in its own suit. The best possible Badugi hand is A-2-3-4 in four suits. When a player is successful in making a hand that includes each suit, this is called a badugi, which beats all non badugi hands. If no player has made a badugi, the best three card hand wins the pot. If no player has a three card hand, then the best two card hand wins. To learn more about how the game is played see our page: How to Play Badugi.

Badugi Online

Badugi is most commonly played online at PokerStars.com. Badugi is one of the few games where online play is more common than live. Despite having been popular in Asian countries for forty-years, the game is still relatively new to most westerners. For this reason, there are few online poker sites that even offer players the chance to play Badugi online, and the games that do exists are generally soft due to many inexperienced players trying this new game out for the first times.

To read more about the stakes and types of games offered at PokerStars, see our page: PokerStars Badugi or to check out Badugi freerolls check out this page: Brahe’s Badugi.

Badugi Origins

Badugi is widely considered to be a Korean Poker game, and while it is true that is has been most popular in South Korea, there is some doubt about it actually having originated in South Korea. The one thing we do know is Paul Eskimo Clark is credited for bringing Badugi to North America and, depending on what day you catch him, will even claim to have invented the game himself while serving in Vietnam.

To read more, see our page: Badugi Poker History

Badugi Strategy

If you like money, Badugi is a great poker game to learn.

There are a few factors that make Badugi such a profitable game. For starters, Badugi is an action game, and action games attract fish. Factor this in with Badugi being new with many players still learning, and the lack of quality Badugi strategy articles in print, and you’ll see why the window of profit potential in Badugi is wide open.

Currently on the web, a lot of the Badugi articles that have been posted are rather weak. While we can’t claim to have the definitive guide to beating Badugi, we have written a guide that, while a bit unorthodox, should be enough to help an otherwise sound player beat most low to mid stake Badugi games. For full details read our page Badugi Strategy or our brand new Badugi tips guide.

Badugi Future

There have been dozens of poker variants outside the realm of “main stream poker” that were introduced and then never caught on as an online poker game. Some examples fitting this category are Crazy Pineapple, Chinese Poker, Holdem Blackjack, Guts, Americana, Pan and Big2. Asking what makes Badugi different would be a good question, so let us answer that.

Badugi has been popular at high stakes brick and mortar games for a decade or so under the name Paldooki. This game didn’t just spring up over night; it simply wasn’t spread as often. Casinos make big money at affordable stakes for the much quicker dealt game of Texas Hold’em, which last time we checked had a demand. The fact that the largest poker site in the world PokerStars.com now spreads it should be an indication of the games potential. Out of all the games we mentioned earlier, PokerStars offered none of them.

Two circuit regulars who would love to see Badugi added to the WSOP schedule are Thang Luu, who finished runner up in a 2007 WSOP event and then came back to win the same event the next two years against record fields, and the well known poker personality Ray Davis who captured a bracelet in the WCOOP $320 buy-in Badugi event at PokerStars.com in September 2009. It later came out from (at the time) WSOP commissioner Jeffery Pollack that the World Series Commission had discussed adding Badugi to its schedule in 2009 but put the idea on the backburner.

Matt Savage, however, decided to give Badugi the go, already announcing it as part of the 2010 LA Poker Classic schedule. Whether or not the WSOP follows remains to be seen, but some thing are clear. Right now, there is a demand for Badugi, the game is growing, and might be worth learning, as it appears likely to be around for some time to come.

There is a lack of Badugi tournament action in live casinos so why not run your own Badugi home game? Check out our Badugi home game article for some quality structures: Badugi Home Game Structures. Planning a home game and want to bush up on dealing Badugi? Check out this article: Learn how to deal Badugi