I'm a beginner to 7-card stud but it confuses me that when a hand is folded when playing online you can't hover over the user to recall which up-cards were folded. I guess this is to mimic playing in person, but this naturally made me wonder that when trying playing 7-card Stud optimally, shouldn't I be writing down upcards as soon as they are dealt in case the information comes into play later on?

And how does this work in person? Does everyone frantically look around the table while the hand is dealt lest they miss an upcard before an early position player folds? Have you ever seen someone write down cards at the table? Or maybe do poker pros simply have the brain capacity to effortlessly memorize the upcards as soon as they are dealt?

NLHL poker players will decide to bluff on the river for example for only having a single blocker in their hands, therefore it seems that having a list of all discarded cards every hand in Stud would be completely invaluable to the best at the game.

I'm sure everyone has their own system but for live play, yes you more or less need to quickly see all the upcards before people start to act. In some games it is fine to ask someone what their upcard was if they folded very quickly, in others I think people would be annoyed with you for asking. In general stud players seem to be fairly old school and the idea would be "we want to pay attention to the upcards but we don't want anyone to know we are paying attention".

The method I use which I would recommend is to say the upcards to yourself in order from highest to lowest. If you miss one or two, you will probably miss the lower cards which should be less impactful in stud high (reverse this for stud8 or razz). Then I repeat the string of upcards to myself once more immediately and a final time if I am still in the hand before 4th st. I also try to take note of several of one suit out, so my inner monologue would be like "AKJJ764 four spades", "AKJJ764 four spades" - meanwhile I'm now looking at my downcards and say I notice I have T2 of hearts in my hand, I might add to my monologue "four spades no hearts out" which seems like it might be relevant. I always look at the upcards before I look at my hole cards.

Agree 100% with DD and I'll also add that live it is considered bad form for the UTG player to fold until after the bringin has acted, so you will have a few seconds.

Online you can even type cards into the chat box.

i used to try to type in the chat box but found it was actually hurting me more than helping me.

basically too much time wasted and the most important thing was i actually almost never remembered i'd type cards into the chatbox lol.

so what i do now is i quickly scan and recite in order what cards are out there just to hear myself say it out loud, then i do it again with the intention of actually processing and imprinting it.

i then say it a 3rd time in a row, except this time a lot more slowly while actually applying the dead cards to each player's hand, so i can begin to develop context. "2256AA dead, so this guy has less ability to make wheels, less rolled up, less this less that" etc.

then what i find is that by the time 4th street and later streets are dealt, it becomes really easy for me to go "that's the third ace, that's the third deuce, such and such player has xyz hands blocked."

i'll also add that the more time i have to process (like if i'm single tabling) the more i'll actually drill down and look for potential flush draws. try to recognize oddities where like, a 9h comes vs an ace open, but there are no other hearts on board. basically like DD said, when you look at suits and you see one suit being dominant, that means there's something out there that's potentially hidden among one person's hand.

For online, I've snapped pics of 3rd street (especially in Stud8) and, if necessary, subsequent streets. You end up fiddling around with your phone more than you should.

Live, I put them in order highest to lowest. When I first started, I would use my foot to count the suits. It is kind of hard to explain in text form but I learned it from a strategy to count aces in single deck and double deck blackjack. I'm sure the strategy can be found online somewhere. Essentially you position your left foot on your toes or your heel and position it left to right and then switch to your right foot as the count goes up. When you practice a little it becomes automatic and when you leave your foot in position it becomes a reminder as to what number you were on and you can concentrate on other things. I know it sounds a little ridiculous but it really helped.

I haven't played a great deal of stud, but on a few occasions when I was getting too tired to trust my memory I just wrote the dead cards down on a napkin. No one seemed to mind. I don't think anyone even really cared. Is there actually a rule against this in some cardrooms?

I just write them down on a little piece of paper

Playing live I'm fairly certain it's not against the rules to write down exposed cards but it probably kills table vibe, fun players want conversation and banter, not someone always scribbling away.

I don't memorize or write down (when playing online) every single card in Stud High. Of course, I'm very cognizant of up cards and make important observations though. For many years, I played online with stud trackers so with a ton of experience with 100% tracking, I think I have a good feel for the types of information that I need that would cause me to play a hand differently than if I wasn't tracking the information. Because that's essentially what it comes down to.

Learned this strat from an old DeucesCracked video (Joe Tall maybe?) - super helpful and definitely a great way to easily remember what's out there. Highly recommended.

I saw on a final table video one of the guys suggested saying the card ranks in your head to the beat of the Tommy tutone song 8 6 7 5 3 0 9. I have found it helpful. t doesn't help with suits but if you remember if many of one suit are out, it helps.