Razz - Sixth Street
One similarity between razz and seven card stud for high is that neither game features much strategy on sixth street. In razz, like seven card stud, if you’ve come this far you will almost always be going to seventh street. Folding on sixth is rarely correct in razz. However, it is important that you adjust your play on sixth street to account for the relative skill level of your opponents. Specifically, if you’re against bad players then betting a mediocre-to-bad hand in an attempt to represent a good hand is usually not the right play.
Example: On sixth street you have (2h 7s) 5h 2h 3d 7h, and your opponent is showing Ac 4s 7s 8c. You have been betting the whole way, but now when you bet you are raised. There is almost always a strong temptation to re-raise here, in an attempt to represent a smooth seven, and hope that your opponent concludes that he must be drawing dead. However, I can assure you that this play will almost never work against a bad player. He is almost guaranteed to have either made a rough eight on sixth street, and is committed to calling you down. Raising here can work occasionally against a decent player, since he would be smart enough to know if whether or not he’s drawing dead against a smooth seven. But a bad player never makes it this far in the analysis.
Along the same lines, you should be betting decent hands into your bad opponents even if there is some chance that you’re behind. An example of this would be where you have a hand like (8c 4d) 7s 2c Jc 6h, and your opponent’s board shows the 4c 7h 6d Qd. He could have a made seven, but that’s very unlikely if he didn’t raise on fifth. In fact, if he plays bad he could have a ten or a jack in the hole, which means you need to charge him for looking at seventh.
The hallmark of bad players is that they call too much. This is true in Hold'em, and it’s definitely true in razz. Don’t assume that your opponent has two ‘babies’ in the hole just because he’s made it all the way to sixth. If he’s a poor player the odds are surprisingly good that he doesn’t have much of a hand, but that won’t stop him from paying you off.
A final note: most poor razz players do far more checking and calling then they do betting and raising. There are exceptions, of course, but by and large bad razz players take a passive approach to the game. Thus, when a ‘typical’ bad player raises you on sixth street it’s time to step back and try to determine exactly what he has, because the chances are good that he has a very big hand. By the same token, don’t assume that he’s drawing to a big hand just because he calls you. You will catch opponents drawing dead to your hand on sixth far more often then you will in other card games, which is one of the reasons why razz is usually such a profitable game.
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