Hi,

I'm new to super stud, I played it in a dealer's choice home game.

All the others games played are no limit or pot limit (hold'em, omaha, omaha hi-lo, big O, courchevel hi-lo). The blinds are 5/5 with a lot of straddles or mississippi

The super stud is played in limit 30/60/90/120/150 for 3rd to 7st. I found it ridiculously big compared to the big bet games.

What would be an appropriate limit to this game knowing that minimum buy in is 500, max buy in is 1500?

holy crap that sounds insane

If the maximum buy-in is 1500 pesos, call that 30 big bets and you could play 25-50 normal limit structure, but the antes would be weird. 5 ante is too small, 10 is too big. An odd but compatible structure would be 5 ante, 10 bring, 25-50 betting. Out of an unhealthy deference to poker tradition, I'd make it normal 20-40 where your final structure would be 5 ante, 5 bring-in, 20 small bet, 40 big bet.

Thanks for the answers, I forget to mention that there is no ante or bring-in but small and big blind instead.
I'll try to persuade them to change the structure since it's a friendly game.

Well blinds won't work for stud. To make a reasonable starting pot, the antes for a full ring game should approximate one big bet, so in a 20-40 game, you'd have 40 in the pot to start, then the bring-in posts a live 5. If you had blinds totaling 40, then the blinds would already be in for one small bet each and it would make for an odd game. Instead of blinds you could have the blind positions post 20 each dead as ante for the table, then have a normal bring-in. If you want to play bigger, just make that amount larger and adjust the bet sizes to match.

you're totally right, I'll try my best to convince them to change the structure but it will take some time since most of them are rich old men who like to gamble.
In the meantime, I'll try to figure out what are the proper adjustements to make in this particuliar format: no ante and a bigger bet on each street. I think: beeing more selective in startings hands and less sticky, mainly on 4th.

You could play superstud PL. That is how it is played in Europe. If limit, the structure should be much smaller than what you have. Is this in pesos or dollars?

the game was played in pot limit but they change it to a wierd evolutive fixed limit because pots were insanely big.
the money is chf which has the same value as dollar.

We always played Super Stud with blinds. In a 20-40 game there would be a 10 SB, a 20 BB and a dead 10 on the button. The reason we played with blinds was because we rolled our own door card on 3rd street and having a predetermined UTG cut down on the angling.

(The action was insane and it didn't matter how much was in the pot to start--the players for whom it would have mattered were on monkey-tilt by the second hand anyway.)

We also rolled our own door card.

You might just make the antes and blinds smaller for super stud. That would make more sense than the weird limit structure.

You could also play in as half pot limit. That would slow it down somewhat, but not stop it if people want to raise back and forth.

If the limit structure doesn't confuse people, there's nothing wrong with bumping it a set amount every round. I used to play in a limit omaha game with limits of 5-10-20-40.

As an aside, whenever they try to keep a game under control by changing from big bet to limit, the opposite effect often occurs. Players are less reluctant to enter pots if they think their stacks aren't at risk during the first betting round or two. Of course by then the pot has become to big to abandon and they are past their mental commitment threshold, so they're done-for anyway.

Selective is good but as far as stickiness it’s the opposite. It costs you relatively little on the small streets but the betting on the big streets keeps getting bigger and bigger. You want implied odds hands that can collect the large bets when they hit. A relatively bad hand in this structure is Aces (or even high rolled up to some extent), a good hand is like A46 of diamonds or even 345 two suit probably quite good.

If you can get it heads up if you hit something on 4th, high rolled up become huge targets for any 3 non-paired lows that can make a straight or flush. The trips will win just often enough for people to keep playing them, but they can lose huge pots.

Would you play any 3 wheel cards on 3rd? The game is played 9 handed, there is often a lot of players on 4th since it's often limped around. Every single pot go to showdown.

As far as stickiness, I was thinking that folding A249 for example on 4th can't be bad in a 6 ways limped pot where some other players have already a strong 4 cards low. In a limped pot the bet on 4th is 30 which is a pot sized bet.

The game is played 9 handed and way to loose to ever get heads up. You're right, high rolled up trips are tricky to play since you're playing face up. How should I play high rolled up in this very loose game?

Then you can get a huge advantage folding marginal hands on early streets.

I'd check-call 3rd with them unless I was jammed, then I'd let them go. It's really important to track all the up cards on 3rd so that you know how live your full house draw is on 4th street. If it's a 6, it makes a big difference if one was folded, for example. Also try to put player's down cards in ranges. If your 4th street card were an ace, for example, it would be nice to know that the people who folded would never fold an ace.

I'd continue to check call until I filled, until I was beat, or until I knew I had the only viable high and nobody had a threatening low or a scary board. If on 5th or 6th you are in it with a made-low hand who is willing to cap, then you can try to punish the drawing players.

But a lot of times in these loose crazy games, a made low will want to take a card off to see if he remains good. When that happens, there's no sense in trying to force the action.

Btw, 3 wheel cards is a good starting hand if it is live.

Do you get to see the upcards on 3rd street in your super stud?

In the UK all cards are face down on 3rd street and everybody turns up the door of their choice simultaneously going to 4th street.

Is this your strategy you'd use for this specific game with the increasing blinds? (I assume for PL as well?)

I didn't mention that we have to shuffle the dead cards on 5th since we are 9 handed.
3 wheel cards are never live in super stud, I found it pretty hard to draw the line whether you should play 3 cards to a wheel or not. Also, you will often brick the 4th since most of the players keep 3 low cards on 3rd.

Yes, every player in choose his door card on 3rd and there is a lot of small cards.

Do they choose before the 3rd street betting or after?

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The only time I've played super stud in a public card room was a couple of years ago at the Bellagio. The dealer turned each player's 3rd street door card up -- I believe it was before the betting, but don't really remember.

Most of my experience has been in private games where the players rolled their own prior to betting.

Yes, this is for games with larger implied odds (and larger reverse implied odds).

For me, the big decision threshold and commitment threshold occurs on 4th street. It's pretty much a binary decision: Have I got a monster draw for a scoop or not?

It could be possible to try and infer what might or might not be returned to the deck, but I doubt it would be profitable to expend a lot of energy doing so.

Also, in smaller games with a chance to reduce the field, there may be smaller edges worth exploiting, but in these wild games I think exploiting small edges adds a lot to variance, but not much to overall profit.