The usual rules for stud poker reveal to all players over half of the cards in play by the time the last cards are dealt. And each player has full information about his hole cards at all times. At each betting round, each player has the same number of face up cards.

In blind stud, these characteristics do not hold. After the antes are paid, each player is dealt seven cards face down, but cannot look at them. The player left of the deal turns over one card and bets. Everyone else must bet without seeing his own cards. Then the next player turns over a card. If the revealed hand (in this case, just one card) does not beat the previous revealed hand, then another card is turned over. Cards are turned over until the second player’s hand beats the single card of the first player. Then that person bets, and all the other players have to decide to fold, see or raise, without knowing what their cards are.

Thus it is possible, at any one moment in the game, for one person to have revealed many cards, while other players may have revealed few or none at all. Being the first to play carries a considerable advantage, as you can be betting with some knowledge about your own hand, as other hands are slowly revealed.

A more generic form of playing poker "blind" is to play regular seven-card stud, except only the players see their cards as the betting goes forward (from fourth street on). This makes the game a lot like draw poker, except that everyone gets an automatic draw of 2 with no discards, and there are still four betting rounds. The only information you can get from the other players is through their betting behavior.

California law forbade blind stud in card rooms for a while in 1985. It had been somewhat popular in Las Vegas card rooms for many years and still has a following, though Texas Hold’Em has become the dominant poker room game. Under the California law blind stud was soon declared a draw poker game, not a stud poker game, and hence a legal option. The reasoning was that in blind stud, all cards are dealt face down, as in five-card draw, which was legal under the California law.