Ultimate Texas Holdem Tips

1. How To Play Ultimate Texas Hold'em
2. How To Play Ultimate Texas Holdem
3. Best Ultimate Texas Holdem Strategy
4. Ultimate Texas Holdem Advanced Strategy

Evolution Gaming’s Live Ultimate Texas Hold’em is an exciting version of the classic poker game, Texas Hold’em. Released in 2014, it has grown to become one of the company’s more sought after games due to its high-quality streaming, multiple camera angels and professional dealers.

The format used in Ultimate Texas Hold ‘Em is similar to other versions of Texas Hold ‘Em that are spread in poker rooms. The biggest draws are that unlike other poker varieties, Ultimate Hold ‘Em is played against the dealer and there is an optional trips bet (which we go over below). He provides a mathematical proof for this in his advanced holdem strategy book, Applications of No-Limit Hold’em. Applications shows that in order to bet with a balanced range (a range composed of the optimal number of value bets and bluffs) on the river, we need to bluff less on each progressive street. Some other miscellaneous tips: #39 Learn Other Game Variations. If you are brand new to Texas Hold’em, maybe put this one on the bucket list. However, learning a new game variation will broaden your poker knowledge and often you will acquire new strategies which are transferable straight back to Holdem.

Streamed live from studios located in Europe and Malta, it allows players to play against the dealer to see which will have the better hand at the conclusion of player hole cards and the five community cards. As with the traditional format of Texas Hold’em, this game commences with a staked bet whereby cards will then be dealt.

A standard format that is known to those who play Texas Hold’em, it affords a level of comfortability and understanding on how the game is played and the steps taken throughout its course. As with other games from Evolution Gaming, it also features the latest in encryption technology to ensure a secure connection and gameplay and is staffed by professionally trained dealers who are engaging and focus on providing a high-quality gaming experience.

Best U.S. Live Ultimate Texas Hold’em Casinos

Texas Hold’em is one of the best known classic games worldwide and is well-represented in American land-based casinos as well as those that cater to players online. This is of little surprise to those familiar with the game, and even those less so due to its exposure on television and in multiple movies.

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Contents

• Best U.S. Live Ultimate Texas Hold’em Casinos

While only a handful of states have legalised online Texas Hold’em, U.S. players wanting access will find a large number of U.S. accepting online casinos ready to provide them with the high-quality gaming experience they crave. If you are looking for the best casinos online to play Ultimate Texas Hold’em, then consider those in the list below, each is reputable, licensed and offers generous signup bonuses.

How Live Ultimate Texas Hold'em works

While in traditional Texas Hold’em poker the game is played against other players, in Ultimate Texas Hold’em, that is altered so that you are playing against the dealer. Those newly exposed to it can take comfort that all other aspects of the game remain the same in so as the betting rounds and hand combinations.

The advantage to this is that, instead of having to calculate what other player cards are, the focus is on your cards and those of the dealer, which in this case, are the equal to yours, two hole cards. Winning hands are achieved through the hole cards and five community cards, with the only difference being is that to qualify, the dealer must have at least pair. Additional advantages allows experienced players to jump right into the action, view multiple camera angles, different viewing preferences and quickly locate where to ante, blinds, play and trip bets, bet denominations and side bets.

How to Play Live Ultimate Texas Hold'em

How To Play Ultimate Texas Hold'em

Playing Live Ultimate Texas Hold’em isn’t difficult for anybody who’s played Texas Hold’em in the past. The table is laid out with betting circles that identify the ante, the blinds, play and trips. The initial move is deciding on an Ante or Blind Bet and whether you wish to place a trip side bet. Once placed, will see the dealer drawing cards, two cards face up from the shoe to both the player and dealer. These are the hole cards. This action is followed by three community cards, also face up being dealt and another round of betting actions by the player. In the event the player chose to check or bet, an additional two community cards will be dealt with each stage, allowing for additional betting to take place. After all, cards are dealt and bets placed, the dealer then reveals their hole cards and will determine who has the best hand.

In order for the dealer to have a qualifying hand, they must have a pair or better. In the case they do not, the player will be returned his/her ante bet. Winning hands are based on traditional poker hand rankings and include a straight, flush, full house, four of a kind, straight flush and royal flush. These pay 1:1 for a straight, 3:2 for a flush, 3:1 for a full house, 10:1 for four of a kind, 50:1 for a straight flush and 500:1 for a royal flush.

If a side bet on trips is placed, the trip payouts are somewhat less as they are more common. These are based at a payout rate of 3:1 for three of a kind, 4:1 for a straight, 7:1 for a flush, 9:1 for a full house, 30:1 for four of a kind, 40:1 for a straight flush and 50:1 for a royal flush.

Live Ultimate Texas Hold'em Tips

Finding the right momentum for this game could be difficult for players who have never played a head-to-head competition against the dealer. However, we’ve collected a few tips that should help benefit players.

• Spectate the game before playing it for the first time, which allows for players to determine how the game is played and how prizes are won effectively.
• Switch to the Overhead Camera Angle to watch the dealer.
• Place small bets at the beginning of a game, figure out your play-style and then start betting big.

Live Ultimate Texas Hold'em strategy

There are hundreds of different strategies for Texas Hold’em. However, the best are often simple and work effectively during the initial round of betting, which is the most important of the three. In Ultimate Live Texas Hold’em, it’s recommended that players increase bets at an interval of four if budgets allow for it. During the second round, players should influence the pot size by doubling up on their bet. However, this move should only be made by players that have four cards with two pairs, as this combination of cards somewhat guarantees that the upcoming round pot prize will be awarded to you. This is called a hidden combination and hits the dealer unexpectedly.

In the final rounds of betting, players are advised to take advantage of the last round of betting by raising their bets once more if the budget and cards allow for it. This is the risky part of the strategy, as at certain times the cards might be in the dealer’s favour. However, and at that point, the pot would’ve been doubled four times from the Ante Bet, and those confident in their cards should make this wager as the reward could be substantial. Remember, the dealer has to combat your betting with wagering of their own, and that could see the pot size become quite significant.

Conclusion

How To Play Ultimate Texas Holdem

Evolution Gaming’s Live Ultimate Texas Hold’em has a staple with online casinos that feature Evolutions collection of live casino games. While it has taken longer to grow in popularity in the U.S., that has changed due to the legalising of it in multiple states. Streamed live to both mobile and desktop devices in high-definition resolution for internet connections at 5mbs or higher, it allows for high energy play that can be quite rewarding to player bankrolls.

Other Live Dealer Games....

Casinos with Ultimate Texas Hold'em

Introduction to Ultimate Texas Hold’em

The strategy involved in table games is something that attracts a whole lot of players. With Ultimate Texas Hold’em, it’s really the whole point of playing the game because it’s a title with a particularly deep level of strategy involved. In fact, it may be the most strategic of all of the casino poker genre.

With that having been said, players shouldn’t be intimidated by it, especially if they have interest in poker. A common complaint of many poker fans is that casino poker games don’t offer enough depth of strategy, and if you’re one of the people who thinks that, then Ultimate Texas Hold’em is definitely a game that will likely appeal to you because it’s almost as if it’s designed to address that specific criticism.

The History of Ultimate Texas Hold’em

Ultimate Texas Hold’em was developed as a game by Shuffle Master, which later became known as Bally Gaming, one of the most popular casino gaming companies in the world. Roger Snow was the man who invented it there, and when it was first introduced, it was only available at video terminals that could “deal” out to several players at once.

One of the reasons for the video terminal approach being used is that it’s a pretty complicated game that was thought to be too experimental and too in-depth to teach to dealers. The amount that would of been spent training dealers is a factor whenever introducing a new game like this, etc. However, it eventually got pretty popular, and a lot of land-based casinos turned it into a table game along these lines.

While this game is considered the intellectual property of Bally, that doesn’t mean that most software providers have permission to use it. However, that doesn’t really stop them, and it’s not on the players to police that type of thing (not that they could if they wanted to). As such, feel free to play away as usual.

Rules and Gameplay

Learning how the gameplay procedure works for Ultimate Texas Hold’em games online can be tricky at first because there’s more to it than other casino poker titles. However, we think the easiest way to learn to play is to read over the rules a couple of times and then try a short session at a free play demo version of the game. If you do that, we think you’ll be able to pick up the flow of the gameplay pretty quickly.

Poker Hand Rankings

Because this is a fairly advanced style of casino poker, we’re going to assume that players go into this title knowing the order of the five-card poker hand rankings. However, we’ll offer a quick refresher here with the poker hands listed from strongest to weakest:

• Royal Flush – Ace, King, Queen, Jack and Ten of a matching suit
• Straight Flush – Five other consecutive cards (other than the combination AKQJT) in a matching suit
• Four of a Kind – Four cards that all have the same rank
• Full House – Three cards that all have the same rank with two more cards of a different matching rank
• Flush – Five cards, not consecutive, but that all have a matching suit
• Straight – Five consecutive cards but that do not have matching suits
• Three of a King – Three cards that all have the same rank
• Two Pair – Two cards with a matching rank along with two cards of a different matching rank
• One Pair – Two cards with a matching rank
• High Card – No made hand listed above; five unrelated cards

Since this is a Texas hold’em style of game as well, your five-card hand is determined by picking out the five cards from the seven available to you (two holes cards plus five community cards) to make the best possible poker hand from the listing above.

Ultimate Texas Hold’em Play Procedure

The following procedure is for the main ante and blind bets. All side bets, including the trips bet, will be discussed in another section below.

1. The player starts by putting bets of equal size on the ante and blind spots on the table.
2. The player and dealer are then dealt two cards each, face-down, and these are the hole cards. At this point, the player can make a play bet of 4x the ante amount. If so, the rest of the cards are dealt, and the hands go to a showdown.
3. If the player elects to check, no more bets are added for that point in time. The first three community cards are dealt (referred to as the flop), and the player gets the option to make a play bet of 2x the ante amount. If so, the rest of the cards are dealt, and the hands go to a showdown.
4. If the player elects to check again, no more bets are added for that point in the hand. The final two community cards are dealt (referred to as the turn and river, individually), and the player has the option to make a play bet that’s the same size as the ante, which is referred to as a call at this point, and go to a showdown. Alternatively, the player can fold and give up the ante bet, the blind bet and any chance of winning the hand.
5. If you get to a showdown, then first it has to be determined if the player opens. This is similar to the idea of qualifying. The dealer opens by having at least a pair, but this can be a pair that’s on the board, so it’s pretty common for the dealer to open.
6. A combination of whether the dealer opens and if the player’s best five-card hand beats the dealer’s best five-card hand determines the payouts.

There are three bets that have to be reconciled: the blind, the ante and the play bet. The easy way to remember how these work is that the ante bet always pushes if the dealer doesn’t open (aka if the dealer doesn’t qualify), and it wins/loses if the dealer does open. Otherwise, all three bets will win or lose based on which of the two hands is the best. Note that if there’s a tie, then all three bets push no matter if the dealer opens or not.

The Values of Winning Bets

With three different wagers in play with each Ultimate Texas Hold’em hand, it’s critical to know how each of the three is paid out because it’s easy to get mixed up. The ante bet is the easiest to know because it always pays at 1:1 when it’s not a push. However, the play bet is slightly more complicated since it pays at 1:1, but the value can be anywhere from one to four times the value of the ante depending on when you put in your raise or call.

For the blind bet, however, this wager’s value is completely based on the end result of your five-card hand. Generally speaking, you need at least a straight for it to pay out, and all hands three of a kind or lower turn this wager into a push regardless of who won the hand. With that said, here’s the most common pay table for the blind bet:

• Royal Flush – 500x
• Straight Flush – 50x
• Four of a Kind – 10x
• Full House – 3x
• Flush – 1.5x*
• Straight – 1x
• Three of a Kind or lower – Push

* Because of the 1.5x payout here, it’s best to play with wagers that are of even amounts of the smallest denominations used in the game. Otherwise, your payout will get rounded down, and you’ll lose a small amount of value each time you’re given a flush.

Each of the three bets of the main game are evaluated in different ways, but it’s not to hard to keep up with them once you’ve seen a few sessions.

Trips Bet and Payouts

There’s an optional side bet that’s usually posted up beside of the blind and ante spots on the Ultimate Texas Hold’em tables that’s called the trips bet. This bet is not affected by whether you win or lose the hand. Instead, it’s generally seen as just a standard side bet where the payouts are determined by your final five-card hand. It wins for three of a kind or better, which is why it’s called the trips bet.

You’ll find a number of different pay tables for the trips bet, but most of them pay 50x for a royal, 40x for a straight flush and 30x for four of a kind. From there, there can be a lot of variation, and there is no real standardized option. Bally Gaming actually lists out four different pay tables with house edges ranging from 0.9 percent to 6.2 percent, but there are plenty of other distributions available online. This means that the house edge for this side bet will just depending on where you’re playing.

Ultimate Texas Hold’em Strategy

Strategy for this game is all about the ante and blind bets, and the side bet isn’t really all that important since it doesn’t require any strategic decisions. However, things are broken down for this game into three sets of decisions.

The first is for the pre-flop decision on whether or not you should make a play bet for 4x the size of your ante. If you decline that option, then you have the flop decision on if you should make the bet worth 2x the size of your ante. Finally, if you also decline that option, there is the situation on the river where you can either call for 1x the size of your ante or just fold. Each of these potential decisions is covered separately below.

The Pre-flop Decision

The decision to put in the big 4x raise before the flop depends entirely on the two cards in your hand. More specifically, it depends on the rank of those two cards and whether or not they are of the same suit. When they’re of the same suit, we call those hands “suited” for short, and when they’re not of the same suit, we call them “off-suit.”

The following is a breakdown of all of the situations where you should use the play bet pre-flop:

• Always raise any pair hand of 33 or higher (check with 22).
• Any hand with an ace gets a pre-flop raise.
• Any hand with a king gets a pre-flop except for off-suit hands that have a two, three or four.
• A queen with an eight or higher is always raised. You’ll also raise with queen-seven or queen-six if they are suited.
• Jack-ten is always raised. Jack-nine and jack-eight are only raised if they’re suited.

That’s all there is to know for the pre-flop betting round.

Best Ultimate Texas Holdem Strategy

The Flop Decision

When you play the flop decision, which is whether to raise with a play bet worth 2x the size of your ante, you only have three cases to keep up with. That makes playing this betting round fairly easy, though you may want to make yourself a note card for reference when you first start out. Here are the three flop raising cases to remember in Ultimate Texas Hold’em:

• If you have a made hand of two pair or better, you always raise.
• If you have a pair that includes at least one card in your hole cards, then raise as long as they’re threes or higher.
• If you have four cards to a flush draw with a hole card for that draw that’s 10 or higher, then you should also raise.

Something worth pointing out here is that you aren’t often going to be raising with draws at all. In fact, you have to have a very strong hand to make that work in this game on any level.

The River Decision

If you put in a check pre-flop and on the flop, you’re left with the river decision to either call for the play bet worth the same size of your ante or to fold and give up your bets and chances of winning. However, the pre-flop and flop decisions are much easier to make than the river decision because you often have to do some counting.

If you have a pair or better that isn’t just two cards on the community board, then you always call. However, if you don’t have a pair and only have a high card hand, you’ll count the number of cards that the dealer can have that can beat you. If that number is 20 or lower, then you call. If it’s 21 or higher, then you go ahead and fold.

That might sound a little complicated at first, but after you try it a couple of times, it becomes pretty straightforward and is a simple fact of counting down the ranks. As a result of this rule, you’ll virtually always fold if there are four cards of a suit on the board and you do not have one of that suit in your hole cards. The reason for this is that there are already nine other cards the dealer can have to beat you with a flush, and that’s before you start counting pairs and other high cards that would give the dealer a better hand.

Live Dealer Ultimate Texas Hold’em

You can find a live dealer Ultimate Texas Hold’em game available at a variety of online casinos with the Evolution Gaming software. This is the most popular software for live dealer casinos out there, so it’s not very hard to find at all.

When you play this game in the live dealer format, you won’t get anything different than the bets we have outlined above. You’ll have the usual ante/blind bet to play, and you’ll also have the trips side bet available with a pretty standard pay table that isn’t all that interesting or different than how we described them up above.

What is different about playing in this environment is that you’ll be able to chat it up with your dealer and the other players at the table. Being able to chat with the other players means that you’ll be able to discuss strategy and how to play your hands, and that means there’s a lot of room for some interesting learning experiences. Players can try to figure out as a group how to play certain betting rounds, or you can just leave all of that to everyone else and play your own hands according to the proven strategies we’ve outlined above.

Overview

Ultimate Texas Holdem Advanced Strategy

There’s no doubt that Ultimate Texas Hold’em is a more involved and more complicated game than most of the other casino poker titles. However, that gives it a unique flavor from a strategic standpoint, and that adds a lot to the live dealer style of play as well since it gives more topics of conversation for the chat.

We mentioned this above, but we want to make sure that new players know that even though this game does have a higher degree of complexity than most other table games, you should not be intimidated by it. It’s not an incredibly difficult game to learn by any means, and there’s always the ability to play at very low stakes to get used to the play style before you ramp things up.

FAQ

Which online casinos have Ultimate Texas Hold'em?

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