Stud Isn't Dead — It's Being Killed

Everyone says stud is dead. Foxwoods has 45 players on stud waitlists right now and zero tables running — which means the game isn't dying, it's being killed.

Pull up Bravo for Foxwoods Resort Casino as of this morning. Three separate stud games are listed: $1/$5 Stud, $5/$10 Stud, and $20/$40 Stud Hi. Combined waitlist: 45 names. Combined tables open: zero.

Fifteen players waiting for $1/$5. Eleven for $5/$10. Nineteen for $20/$40. That $20/$40 list is running at more than 4× its own median waitlist. And not a single dealer is pushing chips across green felt for any of them.

Nineteen players are waiting for $20/$40 Stud Hi at Foxwoods — more than 4× the game's median waitlist — and the table count is zero.

The Demand Is Screaming

You need eight players to open a stud table. Foxwoods has enough names on the board right now to spread five full games with seats left over. This isn't a niche curiosity. This is a room ignoring a line out the door.

The counter-argument is predictable: stud players skew older, they play tight, the rake per hour is lower than a juicy $2/$5 NLH game, so why bother? Fine. But 19 people waiting for a $20/$40 game generate real revenue — if you sit them down. The room isn't making a profitability calculation. It's making no calculation at all. Those 45 names represent actual human beings who drove to Mashantucket, CT, put their names on a list, and got nothing.

A Supply Problem, Not a Demand Problem

Poker rooms love to point at shrinking stud fields as evidence that the game is fading. But when almost 4× the normal waitlist shows up and the room can't — or won't — open a table, the diagnosis is wrong. The patient isn't dying of natural causes. The hospital just isn't treating them.

Stud doesn't need a revival. It needs a room that will open the damn table.

I'm not arguing stud is the future of poker. I'm arguing that 45 players waiting for a game that doesn't exist isn't a dead game — it's malpractice.