How to Play The Stud Poker Version of Murder:

Murder poker has normal seven card stud dealing scheme: two down, four up, one down and vetting rounds after the third, fourth, fifth and sixth cards. The only difference between Murder and seven card stud is a rule that says that a player, who gets two matching cards face-up, must match the pot to stay in the game. If the player does not want to match the pot, he must fold. Otherwise, the pot is doubled and the game continues. Except this stipulation, all other rules of the game are equal to those of standard seven card stud.

If a player is lucky, he well get matching cards face down, and will have a good hand without paying anything, but a better hand is a flush or a straight. Such hand gives quite good chances to win the game and eliminates any risk of paying the pair fee.

Murder can also be played with an additional rule: If all face-up cards are dealt and no one has got a pair upon his face-up cards, the game is re-dealt and everybody re-antes, increasing the pot. If a player gets a pair, but does not want to match the pot and folds, the game continues as usual.

An alternative version of Murder poker, where murders appear more often, is called Homicide. In Homicide, only the first card is dealt face-down, and the remaining six cards are all dealt face-up, so the odds of someone having a pair upon his up-cards are much higher. The pot may be doubled several times during the game, not to mention that with six face-up cards there would be six betting rounds.

Like in Murder, a hand where the hole card matches any face-up card already is a good hand, but in Homicide there is an additional rule to make such hand even better: if a hole card matches any of face-up cards, both these cards are wild in the hand of this certain player. If there are more than one face-up card that match the hole card of the player, all these cards are wild, although it does not save the player from matching the pot.