Ultimate Texas Holdem Strategy

Table Of Contents

• Wizard Of Odds Ultimate Texas Hold'em Strategy
• Ultimate Texas Holdem Strategy Printable
• Ultimate Texas Holdem Strategy Printable
• Ultimate Texas Holdem online, free
• Ultimate Texas Holdem Basic Strategy
• How To Play Ultimate Texas Hold'em Strategy
• Ultimate Texas Holdem Advanced Strategy

Ultimate Texas Hold’em is one of the most popular live and online casino games for poker players.

One big reason is that if you know what you are doing, the game will feature one of the lowest house edges of any casino game.

Remember, poker is a battle royale. When you prepare to don your battle. Texas holdem strategy is a game that provides more odds to win due to its simplicity and various set ups that players may have right from the beginning. It is a very popular game, which bring lots of pleasure and genuine financial rewards. How to play: All rules you need to know. Texas holdem poker strategy is depended on the rules of the game. Ultimate Texas Hold’em is a special table game where you play a hand of poker like Texas Hold’em against the dealer. There’s a lot of strategy involved because of the in-depth and varied selection of betting options. Starting with Opening Hands. The hands that you choose to go into battle with in Texas.

Half the battle is just knowing the basic rules of Texas Hold’em, particularly the hand rankings which are common in most poker games.

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About Ultimate Texas Hold’em

Wizard Of Odds Ultimate Texas Hold'em Strategy

Ultimate Texas Hold’em was developed by Roger Stone of Shuffle Master and similar formats are also known under other names including Heads Up Hold’em distributed by Galaxy Gaming.

If you have learned the basic rules of Texas Hold’em, you will quickly pick up on how to play Ultimate Texas Hold’em with the hand rankings and each player holding two hole cards being the same in both games.

As this is a casino, the house will have an edge. Players should experience plenty of winning sessions, but unlike regular Texas Hold’em, players are competing against the house and not a player.

What you might not know about Ultimate Texas Hold’em is that if it is played correctly it has one of the lowest house edges among any casino game at around 2%.

Reasons to play Unlimited Texas Hold’em

• Low house edge of around 2% when following basic strategy
• Fun to play alone or with friends
• Similar to Texas Hold’em
• Can play for just a few minutes
• Potential to win big

Read on to learn more about the rules of Ultimate Texas Hold’em and how to optimize your play to reduce the house edge to almost nothing.

How to Play Ultimate Texas Hold’em

Usually, you can play Ultimate Texas Hold’em at a casino with up to six players and a dealer (also known as the house).

The game utilizes a standard 52 card deck. Although online, you will find many heads-up games where you will compete one-on-one against the house.

Each player must post an ante and a blind before each hand begins. You will see posted minimums and maximums. Keep in mind that your bet must be the same for both of these and that it will also serve as a base for other bets as the hand progresses.

Therefore, we recommend when first getting your feet wet to bet as small as possible to further the power of your bankroll. You can always adjust with higher bets once you feel comfortable that you have optimized your game.

There are also optional side bets which can vary from casino to casino including the Trips bet you can place before the hand is dealt which we will get into later.

Two cards are dealt to each player and the dealer after the initial Ante and Blind bets are placed.

Remember, hand rankings are the exact same as Texas Hold’em.

Check out our detailed description of how to play Texas Hold’em to brush up on Hold’em hand rankings.

You can decide to bet three times or four times the Ante and place the bet into the Play box or check before the flop comes.

A flop is then dealt and you will have an option whether to bet two times the Ante bet or check once again.

The turn and river are dealt one after the other and you will have one last option on whether to place a bet equal to the Ante in the Play box or to fold the hand.

There is a bit of basic strategy that you should either memorize or have a chart with you while playing to best optimize when to bet in the Play box, when to check, and when to fold.

Players that folded after the river was dealt will automatically lose their Ante and Blind bet.

Those remaining in the hand will turn over their cards as will the dealer. If you have a better Texas Hold’em hand than the dealer you win the Play bet for the same amount as bet.

The Blind bet can also only be won if you have won the hand. Assuming this is the case, it is paid out on a sliding scale and can be worth as much as 50 to 1 for a straight flush. However, if you don’t have a straight or better, you will simply just get your bet back as a push.

Here is a look at the potential different payouts of the Blind bet which can vary slightly from casino to casino.

The Ante bet is a bit trickier. If the dealer doesn’t qualify with at least a pair, you will get your Ante refunded as a push. This is the case whether you had a better hand or not, as long as you didn’t fold your hand.

If the dealer qualified with a pair or better, you will need to beat the dealer in order to win this even money bet.

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Best Ultimate Texas Hold’em Strategy

You should quickly get the hang of the rules of Ultimate Texas Hold’em by reading the rules above and potentially watching a few hands being played.

However, we don’t recommend that you hop right into Ultimate Texas Hold’em until you learn some basic strategy as it could turn out to be a nightmare to play based on gut feeling.

For example, if you decide to blindly bet four times your bet in the Play box every hand, you will be subject to a house edge of around 14%. Likewise, if you aren’t betting at the right times, you will also increase the house edge.

You should always bet the maximum allowed in the Play box before the flop when you bet. The following chart should serve as a guide to when you should place a bet in the Play box and when you should fold preflop.

• B = Bet four times in Play box
• C = Check
• S = Bet four time in Play box if suited, otherwise check

The strategy gets a little easier if you didn’t bet preflop. You should bet two times on the flop in the Play box if you have two pair or better, a hidden pair, or a flush draw with a hidden ten or better. A hidden pair means that there isn’t a pair on the board and you are using one or more of your hole cards to create that pair.

River strategy can be particularly tricky. It is easy to memorize what to do but not always easy to make the optimal play in real-time.

Place a bet of equal to your Ante bet if you have a hidden pair or better or the dealer has less than 21 outs to beat you. After some practice, determining how many outs the dealer has to beat you will become more second nature but take your time at first as it’s your money and the game typically doesn’t have a time limit with the exception of some multiplayer online games.

Side Bets

Side bets are usually a way for online and live casinos to extract a little extra money per hand, spin, or dice roll at extremely bad odds.

This isn’t necessarily the case in Ultimate Texas Hold’em with its optional Trips bets that you will see on just about every table.

It all comes down to the odds that they are paying on the Trips bet as it could be an under 1% advantage for the house under optimal conditions if you can find them.

Your Trips bet can be a different amount than your Ante and Blind bets and is only paid if you wound up with trips or better. In just about every case you are paid 3 to 1 for trips or a set and 50 to 1 if you nail down the elusive Royal Flush.

What you should be looking for if considering to place a Trips bet is a bet table similar to below which gives the house less than a 1% advantage.

Other payout tables might look similar with a Royal Flush paying 50 to 1 and trips paying 3 to 1. However, some smaller differences in the middle of the pay table can make a big difference.

For example, the pay table below would give the house a more than 6% advantage and should be avoided at all costs.

There are other side bets that online and live casinos make available including hole card bonuses and bad beat jackpots.

In general, any side bet that isn’t the Trips bet gives the house a huge house edge and therefore should be avoided.

One exception might be in the case of progressive jackpots where the jackpot is high enough to make the house edge low and, in some cases, even give the player an advantage. One pitfall even here is that the jackpots are few and far between and thus will likely cause you money unless you hit at least one jackpot in your lifetime.

Conclusion

Ultimate Texas Hold’em is a fun online and live casino game that can be played whether you have a few spare minutes or want to grind a long session.

The rules are easy to learn and before long it is possible to master the strategy of the game to reduce the house edge to approximately 2% in the base game.

While it isn’t likely you will become a long-term winner in this game without a bit of luck, it is more likely than many other games to have winning sessions and go on runs to win a chunk of change.

I just wrote a post about Mississippi Stud, which is one of these new poker-based casino games that are slowly replacing blackjack tables in casinos throughout the world. The other new-ish and popular game of this ilk is Ultimate Texas Hold’em, which is a trademark of Bally Gaming, Inc. This post has no association with Bally—it’s just meant to be purely informational and educational.

One thing I’d like to point out right away is that casino games like Ultimate Texas Hold’em aren’t really poker games. They’re casino games which use some of the aspects of poker for their game-play and rules. The difference is where the money comes from.

In a casino game, you’re playing against the house. It’s you versus the dealer or you versus the pay table. You don’t have to beat the other players at the table to win, and when you win, the other players don’t pay you off—the casino does. That’s a huge difference. It usually means that you can get an edge at a real poker game, by being more skilled than the other players. The same isn’t true of poker-based casino games like Ultimate Texas Hold’em.

You don’t have to know how to play real Texas holdem to play Ultimate Texas Hold’em, but it doesn’t hurt. Here’s how the game works, and it’s pretty easy:

Once you’ve checked or played, the dealer spreads 3 more face-up cards. This is the flop. These are community cards that you and the dealer both use to make your final hand. If there are other players at the table, they’re using the same community cards, too. Now there’s another betting round. If you checked before the flop, you can make a play bet of 2X the size of the ante. If you played before the flop, you can only check on the flop.

Ultimate Texas Hold’em combines the turn and the river into a single round. In other words, he deals 2 more cards face up, finishing the deal. If you checked on the previous 2 betting rounds, you now have the option to bet the size of the ante. If you’ve already bet on either of the 2 previous betting rounds, you have no option besides checking at this point.

Your payout depends on whether the dealer opens and on whether your hand is better than the dealer’s. The dealer opens if he has a pair or better. The size of your win for the various bets is based on the game’s pay table. The payouts also vary based on whether the casino is paying off the ante bet, the blind bet, or the play bet. If the dealer opens, and you win, then you win all 3 bets.

If the dealer DOESN’T open, and you win, then you win the blind bet and the play bet. The ante bet is a push, which means you get it back, but you don’t get any winnings with it. (A “push” is the same thing as a tie.) If the dealer opens, and the dealer wins, then you lose all 3 bets. If the dealer doesn’t open, and the dealer wins, then you lose the ante bet and the play bet. The blind is treated as a push. If you and the dealer tie—if you literally have a hand of the exact same poker ranking—then all bets are treated as a push. The pay table for the ante bet and the play bet is easy to remember. If those bets pay off, you win even money. In other words, if you bet $100, you win $100. That’s a 1 to 1 payout.

Ultimate Texas Holdem Strategy Printable

The blind bet is where the money comes from. The payouts for that bet are based on the final poker hand you have, as follows:

• A royal flush pays off at 500 to 1.
• A straight flush pays off at 50 to 1.
• A 4 of a kind pays off at 10 to 1.
• A full house pays off at 3 to 1.
• A flush pays off at 3 to 2.
• A straight pays off at even money.
• Any other hand is treated as a push.

The trips bet has its own pay table, and it pays off regardless of the dealer’s hand value. The casinos have 4 options to choose from for that pay table, but most of them are similar:

• The royal flush always pays off at 50 to 1.
• A straight flush always pays off at 40 to 1.
• A 4 of a kind pays off at 30 to 1 or 20 to 1, depending on which pay table you’re facing.
• A full house pays off at 9 to 1, 8 to 1, or 7 to 1, depending on the pay table.
• A flush pays off at either 7 to 1 or 6 to 1, depending on the pay table.
• A straight pays off at either 5 to 1 or 4 to 1, depending on the pay table.
• A 3 of a kind always pays off at 3 to 1.
• All other hands result in a loss on the trips bet.

By the way, if you’re familiar with Jacks or Better video poker, you’ll notice that the hands where the casino has flexibility in payouts are the same hands that vary on a Jacks or Better game—the full house and the flush. Ultimate Texas Hold’em pay tables also offer different payoffs for straights, but most of the changes come on those 2 key hands.

3- Ultimate Texas Hold’em House Edge

Ultimate Texas Holdem Strategy Printable

The house edge for Ultimate Texas Hold’em, assuming you’re making the optimal bets and raises from an expected value standpoint, is only 2.18%. If you’re using an “approximate” strategy that’s less than perfect, it’s more than that—maybe 2.5% or so using some of the published strategies on the internet. That’s far worse than most blackjack games, but it’s a lot better than many other table games, too.

According to Eliot Jacobson, one of the experts on advantage play in casino games, there are techniques for lowering that house edge even further, even to the point where a player might have an edge over the casino. Most of these techniques involve finding a sloppy dealer who either reveals his hole cards or one of the flop cards.

In advantage play lingo, this is called “hole carding.” It’s a common method of getting an edge at blackjack. When playing with a competent dealer, this is practically impossible. You can use the house edge for a game to compute your expected losses per hour. You just multiply the average number of hands per hour by how much you’re betting per hand. That gives you the total amount of action you’re bringing the casino each hour.

In Ultimate Texas Hold’em, the number of hands per hour is probably about 40. It could vary based on the dealer’s proficiency and the players at the table and how long they take to make decisions. If you’re betting $100 per hand and making 40 bets per hour, you’re putting $4000 per hour into action. If the house edge is 2.18%, you can expect to lose—in the long run, on average–$87.20 per hour.

You can use this information to estimate how much this kind of entertainment costs you and compare it other forms of entertainment. You should always keep in mind that this is an estimate based on the long term, which means 1000s of hands. In the short run, over a few hours, you could lose far more than this. You could also win.

4- Ultimate Texas Hold’em Strategy

Since you have meaningful decisions to make in Ultimate Texas Hold’em, this is a game where you can and should learn a strategy. In fact, that 2.18% house edge that I mentioned is a number that assumes you’re using the mathematically correct strategy. Most people can’t memorize or use an optimal strategy, so you should assume that even if you study an appropriate strategy, you might face an effective house edge of more like 2.5% or so. According to Eliot Jacobson, this is a reasonable approximation of the correct strategy for this game:

Preflop

Here’s how you should play the following hands preflop. You should make the maximum possible raise with any of the following hands whether the cards or suited or not:

• Any hand with an ace in it.
• Any hand with a king in it if the 2nd card is 5 or higher.
• Any hand with a queen in it if the 2nd card is 8 or higher.
• Any jack + 10.

If you have suited cards, you should also raise the maximum amount with these hands:

• K2, K3, or K4
• Q6 or Q/7
• J8 or J/9

Also, if you have a pair of 3s or better, raise the maximum amount. If you have ANY other cards, you should just check.

Strategy on the Flop

If you raised preflop, you have no choice but to check now. If you checked preflop, then you should raise in the following situations only:

• If you have 2 pair or better.
• If you have a pair of 3s or more using at least one of your hole cards.
• If you have a 4-card flush draw where at least one card is 10 or higher.

In any of those cases, you should raise the maximum amount. Otherwise, just check.

Strategy on the Turn + River Round

This is where the strategy gets most complicated. You should raise at this point if you have a pair of 3s or better using at least one of your hole cards, of if the dealer has less than 21 outs. “Outs” are cards that the dealer might have in the hole which will beat your hand. This is where being a poker player might come in handy, because understanding the concept of outs is fundamental to being a poker player.

Here’s an example of an out:

Ultimate Texas Holdem online, free

To the best of my knowledge, Ultimate Texas Hold’em is not available to online players for real money. It’s a trademarked game belonging to the Bally Corportation, and they’re pretty serious about protecting their intellectual property. I was able to find a couple of sites offering free versions of Ultimate Texas Hold’em that you can play online. These games use “play money” chips, which have no monetary value. There’s no substitute for actually trying a game and learning how it works before playing it in a live casino setting, by the way.

Ultimate Texas Holdem Basic Strategy

How To Play Ultimate Texas Hold'em Strategy

I don’t know how long any of these free versions of the games will be available on the internet, though, so I haven’t listed links to any of them here. I suspect that any site hosting a free version of Ultimate Texas Hold’em without getting Bally’s explicit permission first will receive a cease and desist at some point. But I don’t know.

Ultimate Texas Hold’em is a fun, skill-based, poker-based casino game that resembles Texas holdem. The biggest difference is that you’re playing against the casino dealer instead of the other players at the table. And instead of having a pot made up of the bets the other players made, you have a pay table that determines how much you get paid off if you win.

The house edge on the game is reasonable for this kind of game, but at 2.5%, it’s still not nearly as good as blackjack. Give it a try, though, if it sounds interesting. The basic strategy presented in this post isn’t that hard to follow.

Ultimate Texas Holdem Advanced Strategy