Ultimate Texas Hold’em is one of the most popular card games in casinos around the world, mostly thanks to its resemblance to Texas Hold’em Poker, the most popular poker variation out there.
The game is far simpler than Texas Hold’em Poker, as the majority of strategic elements are taken out of the game and you only have to face the dealer instead of a number of other poker players.
That said, Ultimate Texas Hold’em is a table game, which means it is designed to give the casino an edge over you, which means you can’t play this game professionally for consistent winnings.
Yet, Ultimate Texas Hold’em is a game with one of the lowest house edges out there, and it is incredibly fun to play, so it can be an amazing pastime when you visit a casino.
But how hard is it to learn Ultimate Texas Hold’em strategy and play optimally every time? We explore this topic and teach you everything you need to know about playing the best possible strategy at Ultimate Texas Hold’em tables.
What You Need to Know in Ultimate Texas Hold’em
Observing all gambling games you can play at the casino, Ultimate Texas Hold’em is neither the simplest nor the most complex one to learn.
The basic rules of the game are quite simple, and you can learn all about them in our extensive guide to Ultimate Texas Hold’em.
When it comes to strategy, there are a few decisions you must make in every hand, and these decisions should be made in accordance with an optimal strategy.
If your decisions differ from the strategy too much, the house edge can go from as low as 1.3% to as high as 14%, which is why playing optimal strategy is essential.
This strategy, however, can be summed in a few simple rules you can follow, including a simple preflop betting chart you can memorize and a few rules for flop and turn betting.
How to Play Before the Flop in Ultimate Texas Hold’em
The preflop betting round is the most important in Ultimate Texas Hold’em, and it is the one that gives you a chance to make the biggest bets.
Once the hole cards are dealt, you will have a chance to bet up to 4x your ante bet. While other options are available, you should always either bet 4x or check before the flop.
Here is a quick summary of the hands you should be betting 4x with before the flop:
- Pocket Pairs 33+
- Any Ace
- K5+
- Any Suited King
- Q8+
- Q7 and Q6 Suited
- JT+
- J9 and J8 Suited
- 98
In all other cases, you should simply check your hand and proceed to the flop, at which point you will have a chance to bet again.
How to Play Flop and River in Ultimate Texas Hold’em
Whenever you end up having a hand that does not bet preflop according to the optimal strategy charts, you should proceed to re-evaluate your hand on the flop.
The rules for betting the flop are a bit simpler, as you are supposed to bet 2x the ante whenever you have a pair with one of your hole cards or a flush draw with a Ten or better in the hole.
If you still don’t have a pair with a hole card or better, you should once again check and proceed to the river, which brings the remaining two community cards.
In this final betting round, you should place the 1x bet whenever you have a pair with one of your hole cards or better, or whenever the dealer has fewer than 21 outs to beat your hand.
Learning to count how many cards beat you may take some time, but it is another essential part of the strategy that will allow you to get the best possible results at Ultimate Texas Hold’em.
Ultimate Texas Hold’em Compared to Other Gambling Games
When talking about the difficulty of a gambling game, we should always compare it to other games you can find at a casino and think about how it compares.
The one game whose strategy is definitely more difficult to learn than Ultimate Texas Hold’em is Blackjack, as there are far more nuances to playing Blackjack optimally.
Some other casino games, such as Baccarat and Roulette, require very little strategy to play optimally, as there is almost nothing you can do to actually change the odds.
So, Ultimate Texas Hold’em ranks as one of the more difficult game to play at a casino, but once you learn the optimal strategy, you will be able to bring the house edge down significantly and have a real chance at winning in every session.
Learn the Optimal Ultimate Texas Hold’em Strategy Today
The optimal Ultimate Texas Hold’em strategy is fairly simple and should not take you more than an hour or so to memorize in full and apply at the tables.
If you don’t mind studying a little, you should get to a point where you are making nearly no mistakes within just a few sessions of playing this exciting casino game.
Past this, you can keep going and learn how to use some slight edges such as dealer mistakes and other player’s hole cards that get exposed to give yourself some additional advantage.
Once you master all these slight nuances, you will notice that Ultimate Texas Hold’em quickly becomes one of the best games to play on the casino floor, and definitely one that allows you to play for a long time and get a lot of bang for your buck.
