How to Play 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.

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.

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.

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.

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:

 
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.

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.