Casinos are always looking for new games to offer bored gamblers. Over the last decade or 2, these games are more commonly related to poker than anything else. But games like these—including Scientific Gaming’s Ultimate Texas Holdem—are more akin to blackjack than to poker. In fact, dealing Ultimate Texas Holdem is considered dealing a novelty casino game. The College of Southern Nevada covers how to deal Ultimate Texas Holdem in their blackjack class.

What’s the big difference between Ultimate Texas Holdem (and games like it) and “real” poker games? The main difference is who you’re competing with. In a so-called real poker game, you’re competing with the other players at the table. If you win money, you’re winning it from them. If you lose money, you’re losing it to your competitors at the table.

Dec 04, 2018 If you use perfect basic strategy on Ultimate Texas Holdem, the house expects to win a little over 2%. Let’s assume that the house edge is 10% if you don’t know basic strategy. What does that do to the cost of playing the game in the long run?

This isn’t a value judgment. It’s perfectly all right to play house-banked casino games. Gamblers do it every day. I’m pointing out the distinction because it’s important to know what you’re getting into when you play a casino game.

With that as a premise—understanding in detail what you’re getting into when you’re playing a casino game—I offer you this post: “The Definitive Guide to Ultimate Texas Holdem.” The idea is to share everything you would ever need or want to know about Ultimate Texas Holdem. Luckily, it’s not that complicated a game. There’s no need to write an entire book about it, like you would do with blackjack or poker.

Ultimate Texas Holdem is a card game where you play heads-up against a casino dealer. Other players at the table are also playing heads-up against the dealer. It features a progressive jackpot, among other payouts.

You start by making 2 equal-sized bets:

• The Ante Bet
• The Blind Bet

At most casinos, the minimum bet is either $5 or $10. The maximum bet is usually between $50 an $500.

You also have 2 optional bets you can make:

• The Trips Bonus Bet
• The Progressive Bet

You start by getting 2 hole cards from the dealer—these are 2 cards that are dealt to you face-down, just like in regular Texas holdem.

When you get those cards, you can choose from the following actions:

• Check
• Bet 3X the Ante (A “Play” Bet.)
• Bet 4X the Ante (Also a “Play” Bet.)

After you’ve made your decision, the dealer reveals 3 face-up cards—the “flop.” (This is also how regular Texas holdem works.)

If you checked when you got your hole cards, you have the option now to place a bet of 2X the Ante (another example of a “Play Bet.”) After that decision is made, the dealer turns over 2 more face-up cards—the turn and the river, in Texas holdem terms. Note that the action here is different than in traditional Texas holdem. Normally you’d have a turn, followed by a betting round, then the river, followed by another betting round.

Once you’ve made your decision, the dealer reveals her hole cards and announces the final hand. If your hand beats the dealer’s hand (using the standard poker hand rankings), you win even money on your Ante bets and the Play bets. On the other hand, if the dealer’s hand beats yours, you lose your Ante, Blind, and Play Bets. If you tie, then these bets are all treated as a “push.” (A push is when your original bet is returned to you, but without any winnings. You have neither a net win nor a net loss.)

The Blind Bet is handled differently. It pays off if you win AND if you have a straight or better. If you have less than a straight but still beat the dealer, the Blind Bet is treated as a push. The Blind Bet is paid off based on a pay table. The better your hand, the more it pays off. (It’s like video poker in this respect.)

Casinos generally use a shuffling machine called an “i-Deal single deck specialty shuffler.” That’s because this game was created by Shufflemaster, which is now a division of Scientific Games. Shufflemaster’s reason for existence is to sell shuffling machines to casinos, so creating new cards is something they do in service to this goal.

The Blind Bet and the Trips Bonus Bet have 2 different pay tables.

Here’s a common pay table for the Blind Bet:

Keep in mind that the Blind Bet pays off regardless of whether the dealer qualifies. Also, notice that 3 of a kind doesn’t pay off for the Blind Bet, which is an interesting quirk of the game. The pay tables can vary—the casino gets to choose from multiple options. For example, some casinos pay off 40 to 1 instead of 50 to 1 for a straight flush. This changes the house edge for the game, of course.

Here’s a common pay table for the Trips Bonus Bet:

Here are a couple of facts to keep in mind about the Trips Bonus Bet:

• Your hand doesn’t have to win. It pays off regardless of whether you or the dealer wins.
• It wins even if you don’t have to use your hole cards. You can just play the board (the flop, turn, and river.)
• It wins even if you fold.

How the Progressive Bet and Jackpot Works

The progressive bet in Ultimate Texas Holdem is also an optional side bet. At most casinos, this bet is a flat $1 bet. But at some casinos, the Progressive Bet is $5. You can win 1 of 2 progressive jackpots in this game—the smaller jackpot, or the larger jackpot. To win the smaller progressive jackpot, you must use at least 1 of your hole cards. The smaller progressive pays off for hands that are a full house or better.

To win the bigger progressive jackpot—which is 100% of the jackpot—you must use both your hole cards and the flop to form a royal flush. If you hit the royal flush on the turn or the river, you don’t win the bigger progressive. You can also win a percentage of the full big progressive jackpot

Casinos also feature something called an “Envy Bonus.” This is a bonus paid to any player at the table when one of the other players wins the progressive jackpot.

Casino games where you make decisions usually have a house edge that varies based on how well you make those decisions. In other words, your strategy matters. There’s always a mathematically correct play in every situation. In Ultimate Texas Holdem, your strategy is limited to whether you make Play Bets during the various stages of the game. For me, this isn’t an intuitive decision. You can find various websites offering strategies for this, but I have another recommendation:

The house edge is the amount of each bet that the casino projects you’ll lose on average based on the probabilities behind the game. Obviously, the lower the house edge, the better for the player. You should do everything you can to minimize the house edge on any casino game you play.

If you use perfect basic strategy on Ultimate Texas Holdem, the house expects to win a little over 2%. Let’s assume that the house edge is 10% if you don’t know basic strategy. What does that do to the cost of playing the game in the long run?

There’s an interesting post at Two Plus Two from a gambler describing his basic strategy for Ultimate Texas Holdem. I don’t know how close it mirrors a mathematically perfect strategy, but here’s what “nonprofitgambler” says is the correct way to play:

Preflop, he suggests raising with any of the following hands:

• Any ace
• Any k5+, and any king suited
• Q5s+, Q8+
• J8s+, JT+
• 33+ for pocket pairs

Ultimate Texas Holdem Strategy Chart

That small “s” after the number means that the cards are of the same suit (they’re “suited.”) On the flop, he says most people play the same, and that it’s correct—if you pair anything, you raise. But those obviously aren’t the only hands you should raise with here. You should also bet flush draws, straight draws, and combination draws. This means you have 4 cards to a big hand. On the river, you should bet any kind of made hand, but some boards are scarier than others.

Finally, I’d like to point out that the house edge on Ultimate Texas Holdem isn’t outrageous, but blackjack is still almost always a better deal. With perfect basic strategy, many blackjack games have a house edge of just 0.5%. This means you get the same kind of entertainment for closer to $2/hour instead of $8/hour.

You can play a nice, free version of Ultimate Texas Holdem at this site. It has a place where you can toggle the sound on and off. You can also toggle the “give advice” button off an on. If you’ve never played Ultimate Texas Holdem before, this page is a great way to practice. It’s refreshingly free of advertising, too, which is rare and unusual in this industry.

Also, if you like Ultimate Texas Holdem, I suggest you give multiplayer Texas holdem in the poker room a try—if you haven’t already. It’s a lot more fun, and you have more of an opportunity to get an edge, since you’re competing against other players.

That’s it for my “Definitive Guide to Ultimate Texas Holdem.” I can’t imagine any information you could want about the game that I’ve left out. But if I did miss something, or if you have questions about Ultimate Texas Holdem that remain unanswered, please put a note in the comments.

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.

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.

Basic Strategy Ultimate Texas Holdem

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

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:

How To Play Ultimate Texas Holdem

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.

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.

Ultimate Texas Holdem Strategy Card

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 Strategy Tips

Texas Holdem Strategy Chart

Ultimate Texas Hold'em Basic Strategy Free