Next to casino war, learning how to play five card stud is probably the easiest game to understand. Any game of poker called stud refers to the fact that players are dealt a set number of cards and they do not exchange or draw any additional cards. As for strategy, a player with a first two-card pair has a huge advantage, but a single ace in the whole will sometimes be a winner against other hands!

Five card stud poker is played with a standard English deck of 52 cards. No jokers or wild cards are used. The game can be played with as few as two players, and some of poker history's most famous games involved five card stud and just two players.
How to Play
Although every poker game can be adapted and changed, the standard game starts with an ante of at least one chip from each player to start the pot with, and betting begins after each player receives two cards. The first card to each player is dealt face-down, the second one is face-up. The highest card (ace is high, or low for a straight of A-2-3-4-5) begins the action by making a wager or checking. If another player bets, each additional player will have the chance to call the wager, raise the wager, or fold their cards and sit-out until the next hand.

After the first round of betting, a third card is dealt face-up with another round of betting. The same fashion of play is followed for a forth and fifth card, each dealt face-up. After the fifth card is dealt and the betting is finished, players turn over their fist card and reveal their final hands.

In most cases a single pair or two pair will win. It is much harder to make a straight or flush (or a higher hand) in five card stud than in a draw game or a community-card game like Texas Hold'em.
Bet Variations
If you already know how to play poker, you may know that there are two standard forms of betting structures: limit and no limit. In limit poker, the players agree to a simple limit on all bets, such as 25-cents to a dollar, and each bet needs to be in that range.

In no-limit, a player may wager any amount up to the total cash and chips they have in front of them at any time. The term table-stakes means only that no more money may be brought into play on a hand that has already started.
Poker in the Movies
In the movies, especially old westerns like A Big Hand for the Little Lady, the players suddenly "bet the farm" or whatever they have of value, although games with stakes like that were exceedingly rare. In the movie The Cincinnati Kid, Steve McQueen and Edward G. Robinson play a hand of five card stud eerily similar to a real hand played in 1948 Las Vegas between Johnny Moss and "Nick the Greek" Dandalos.

In both cases the game was no-limit, and in each case one of the players decided to make a larger than sensible call or raise with the hope of making an unbeatable hand that would devastate the other player's bankroll. In the movie (Spoiler Alert!), the Kid is beaten when his opponent makes a straight flush and walks away from the game busted. In the real game in Las Vegas, Nick Dandalos also makes a straight flush, heavily damaging Moss's chip stack, but eventually it is Moss who prevails after months of play.

When the game ends, Dandalos is purported to have said, "Mr. Moss, it looks like I'll have to let you go." Probably a wise decision, for although Dandalos spent a lifetime playing games of chance with great success and winning a fortune, Johnny Moss was the best poker player of his generation, even doing well more than twenty-years later as the inaugural champion of the World Series of Poker.

Five card draw is fun and easy to play, just make sure you choose the denomination of your chips, and your table stakes and betting limits before the first hand is dealt!