Big River/ Mississippi Seven-card stud homepage.
The no-limit championship game.
The rules: Big River/mississippi is seven-card stud, except that the fourth and fifth cards are dealt together in a two-card individual "flip" and the last card is face-up. This shortens the game to four rounds of play, and gives everyone a multi-card draw, bringing seven-card stud into the twentieth century for the first time and making it an excellent no-limit championship game.

Contents

Introduction.
"As if someone wouldn't have found it anyway."
Jerry Seinfeld's comment on de Soto's "discovery" of the Mississippi river.

What's the deal with Big-River/mississippi. Playing Big River, or mississippi-seven-card stud is much like playing traditional seven-card stud, so much so that anyone who can play the old game can play the new one at mor or less the same level of skill at the first try: in fact after a few hands it is hard to realise that you are playing a new game, except that your pulse rate may be higher than usual. Big River is a significant improvement over traditional seven-card stud: it's faster, cheaper to play and is ideal for pot-limit and no-limit play. That makes Big River the most significant invention in poker since Omaha, if not Holdem, and once the intitial period of resistance is behind us, it will be high on the permanent list of major poker games. In doing so it will replace traditional seven-card stud (down-the-river-7cs) which is a game based on obsolete 19th century principles and which is totally useless as a no-limit championship game.

There are a few things which should become obvious to an objective observer after playing Big-River/Mississippi seven-card stud for a while, or even thinking about it using tools available to any competent theorist. Firstly, if Big River had been invented first then Down-the-river would never have been played, except perhaps as a dealer's choice game. Fourth street and the last-card-down rule in traditional seven-card stud were invented in the 19th century and they are simply not missed when they are gone: on the contrary, because in exchange for surrendering those two obstacles to rational play, every player gets a two-card flip when they call the first round which gives much more incentive to call the first round, makes the game cheaper to play (by shortening it) and bringing five-cards into play by the second round of bets.

Bringing five cards into play in the three-two deal in Big-river seven-card stud is every bit as exciting as the two-three deal of the Holdem family of games, and since it preserves starting equity perfectly it is also very generous: you have a 28% chance of improving a starting pair (if your cards are all live) as opposed to only 12% in Holdem, where you must make trips to improve. And if you start with three cards to a straight or flush you have more chance of flipping a made hand or a flush/straight draw than even Omaha.

The two-card flip is very generous because it does not unfairly rob anyone of their starting card-values and brings all parts of poker ranking system into play equitably. A further advantage of Big River seven-card stud over Down the River is that by dealing the last card face up instead of down, holdings as low as "big trips" can be the absolute nuts at the end, so again, the true value of the hands you make is preserved perfectly. In Down-the-river the value of straights and flushes is severely affected by the fact that they can never (within reason) be the nuts at the end: at pot-limit that makes them almost unbettable at the end if the money is deep, a fact which is usually masked by the fact that usually no one has any serious money left after five betting rounds anyway.

Down-the-river is based on the nineteenth century notion that the only way to deal an open-poker game was in the form (X)1-1-1...(1), which might be called the long-stud river-down layout, since it was used for stud games from six to nine cards in length. A universal characteristic of the long-stud form is that it cannot cut it for no-limit play, and has problems at pot-limit game also, though they are playable if no one has anything better. In the twentieth century Holdem established the standard for a championship no-limit open-poker game: which is X-Y-1-1, in holdem's case producing the 2-3-1-1 formula which has been exploited in Omaha and a number of other variations.

In stud, game inventors were for some reason locked into step so thoroughly that it didn't occur to anyone (till recently) to introduce the most basic poker invention of all, the multi-card draw, leaving six and seven-card stud in the nineteenth century, structurally speaking.

As a result despite being the overwhelmingly dominant game in the USA for thirty or fourty years, Down-the-River missed the cut when Championship play was introduced in the 1970's, because championship play is played with no-limit betting, the "most" poker you can play. Defenders of limit-betting as the ultimate form are in effect saying "never mind the quality, feel the width". But without doubt, if by some mistake fixed-limit betting had been chosen to decide the world championship, Down-the-river would have been the obvious, indeed even perhaps the only choice, since fixed-limit Holdem was less popular than Down-the-river even it's it's home territory of Texas. (I'll take correction on that if anyone knows better.)

If that is accepted, then it follows that if BigRiver had been invented first, then it rather than Down-the-river would have had a 70%+ market share in 1970, and since it is an excellent no-limit game, it would have made the cut and been the natural choice as the World championship game. Holdem fans should remember that their game made no impression on the wider world for forty years, and it wasn't until it had the cachet of being the World Championship game and featuring in a hit song (The Gambler) that a significant number of poker players took any notice of it. Even in 1978 when the classic "Super-systems" was first published Doye Brunson has to allow for the fact that almost no one had played it, even though it was invented in the 1930's and had been the World Championship game for six or seven years.

In a showdown, Big-river can easily hold it's own against Holdem and it is demonstrable from basic principles that it is a more accurate test of poker skill: the more intelligence (ie, useful information) which you have, and the more precisely starting equity is maintained for the duration of the game, the more skilful the game, and Big River is well ahead of both Holdem and Down-the-river in both categories. Even in it's nineteenth century form of Down-the-river, Seven-card stud has been incredibly durable, and is comparable or superior to Holdem as a test of fixed-limit betting prowess. And this is despite carrying the huge handicap of being locked out of the biggest development in modern poker, which is no-limit championship play, now played for million dollar prizes on television. Now, Seven-card stud in the form of Big River can be played for similar stakes, and will be when a few people start really understanding what that means. Down-the-river will never be played in a game where someone says "I raise a million" and that is it's downfall.

Where to play Big River/mississippi.

The first thing to do is get a deck of cards and deal out some hands so you can see how it works. Big River is not Down-the-River but it definitely is seven-card stud (which is a generic name, as is down-the-river: the only specific names I know of are Slippery Sam and Seven-toed Pete, which I kind of like) so anyone who can play seven-card stud already knows how to play Big River. Starting requirements are about the same, but the two-card flip allows the profitable play of some of the more marginal hands if the situation is right.

Finding a game is almost impossible at the moment, though it's been dealt at Binion's in Vegas during the BARGE event in August for the past two years and there are moves to have it added to the playlists of similar events where local laws allows the play of new games. Getting a regular home-game to try out a new game for real money might also be a problem, but after half an hour or so of playing Big River it's pretty hard to go back to the boredom of fourth street, so be patient and they'll come round. Believe me, it is worth the effort of overcoming initial resistance in order to play Big River.

If you have a progammable seven-card stud simulator such as Wilson's Turbo, you can play a version of Big River by adjusting the player profiles so that they all check automatically at fourth street and there is never a bet tween the fourth and fifth card. The last card is still deal face-down (unless they've upgraded it to play Big-River properly) but it works OK and you can generate all the charts you need.

What's so good about Big River??

In my excitement at inventing the best game in seven-card poker universe it was at first hard for me to understand why others could not immediately see it for what it is. Since then I've realised that the enjoyment of games lies partly in the memories and shared experiences of past games, so it takes time to build up a following. But then, the half-life of sentimental attachment to the idea that Down-the-river is the only game which can be called seven-card stud is about an hour, once Big River is in play. The truth is, once you've played it a few times, you'll probably prefer it to most, if not all other poker forms.

Big River's straight-forward and logical layout ensures that it far outclasses both Holdem and Down-the-River in consistently rewarding skilful play, and as a result the better player wins more often and faster in Big River than either of the other two. But it's not all bad news for weaker players because they spend less time wrestling with the structural flaws which exist in other games, and more time exploiting the rich variety of betting and bluffing situations which the game presents. One of the great things about BigRiver/mississippi is that it requires far less of the specialised knowledge which is required to cope with Holdem and Down the River: there are simply fewer obstacles to rational and aggressive play in Big River.

If you like poker, then you will like Big River, even if you don't like it's close relative Down-the River7cs. Many Holdem players find fourth street and the River alien territory and find stud much more enjoyable without them.

The chart below compares the chances of improvement at the second round in different games. results are given for starting pairs (two-pair in omaha)or an ideal straight or flush holding (two-suited in omaha).

Chances of second round improvement

 5-card stud.......... alligator...........7-card stud..........holdem.........omaha.......... mississippi
(The captions may not be aligned with the chart, depending on browser font settings. Alligator is a new form of 6-card stud, dealt 2-2-1-1 and is discussed further here. )

As can be seen from the chart, the two-cardflip of big/mississippi can be very generous, with there being most chance of improvement in all categories shown, except in the trivial case of making a single pair on the flop in omaha (which isn't much help). This has led some to presume that this causes some sort of inflation of hand values such as is seen when wild cards are used, or too many cards are dealt, but this can easily be seen to be incorrect when you remember that fifth street in Big River is exactly the same as Down-the-river in terms of making particulr hands after five or seven cards. There is some shift in relative values, mainly because staights and flushes become more profitable, but the overall chances of making a hand are exactly the same.

The chances of making a straight or flush on th flip in Big Rive/mississippi are a very generous 5.4% and 5% respectively when no required cards are dead, more than five times as easy as in holdem. This means that three cards to a big flush or straight is a very powerful hand. If none of your cards are dead you will make a pair 46% of the time, so there are excellent chances of making both a pair AND the fourth straight or flush card. When we compare the chances of making trips from a starting pair (8%) and the chances of making a straight or flush (5.4%, 5%) it can be seen that the contest between pairs and straights and flushes is very even in mississippi, and simply sitting and waiting for a big starting pair is not likely to be a winning strategy. Mississippi is not a game for rocks, and active aggressive play with any betting form.

Further details of the rules and suggested betting structures for missisippi and several other stud variations which use the two card draw can be accessed here.

Comments and corrections are welcome and can be sent to the inventor, davzanetti@yahoo.com

David Zanetti <

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