Holdem Betting Strategy

I just wrote a blog post about increasing your chances of winning at Blackjack, and I thought, you know what, this would make a great series of posts!

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. An effective Ultimate Texas Holdem Strategy would be as follows: If you make a high payout by making a pre-flop play bet, you can bet 4x your Ante, but you need to have good hole cards. There are some hole cards which you should raise in the pre-flop.

So, now I’m writing a post about how to increase your chances of winning at Texas holdem.

The good news is that the casino doesn’t care if you win at Texas holdem or lose at Texas holdem.

The house isn’t banking the game, so you don’t have to deal with beating the casino.

The bad news is that you still need to beat your competitors at the table. Here are some tips on how to do that:

Tighten Up

If you’re not winning often enough at Texas holdem to break even or show a small profit, you probably need to tighten up. Some of the more experienced poker players reading this might think they’re playing tight enough already, but if that’s true, why aren’t you winning enough to break even?

If you’re a beginner, you might not even know what I mean when I suggest you “tighten up.”

This way you’ll be putting your money in the pot when you have a better probability of winning the pot.

It’s important that you have a gas pedal and brakes, too.

You might have a super hand preflop, but if the flop doesn’t fit your hole cards at all, you should be ready to get away from the hand before it’s too late to get out.

This doesn’t mean you have to lay down and die every time you don’t get a perfect flop. You can still make continuation bets against weak opponents.

Winning in the long run in poker rooms and Texas Holdem poker sites means losing less money on pots you probably weren’t going to win.

Saving a few dollars is just as important as winning a few dollars.

Bet and Raise More Often

The next step is get more aggressive – this means betting and raising more often.

If you’re playing tight, you usually have strong hands.

When you bet and raise with those strong hands, you do 2 things to help you increase your chances of winning:

1. You get more money in the pot when you have a better chance of winning a showdown.
2. You pick up money from the pot when all your opponents fold.

This means that if you have strong cards, and you’re the first one in the pot, you should bet instead of check.

I’ve read a book recently by Ed Miller where he suggests that tight aggressive players always fold when raised to. I don’t think most tight aggressive players play that simply at all.

But most players who aren’t winning enough are playing too many hands, and they’re playing the hands they are playing too passively.

If you don’t feel good enough about your hand to raise with it, you really don’t need to be calling with it, either.

I’ve seen at least one person describe a tight aggressive strategy as being a “raise or fold” strategy.

That’s not quite right, but it’s closer to optimal than you’re probably playing right now.

Semi-Bluff More Often

I laughed at a friend of mine who’s loose aggressive not long ago because he told me, “Bluffing is an essential part of the game.”

Bluffs work best when you’re bluffing against 1 or 2 opponents.

A better option – for most players – is to learn how to semi-bluff.

A semi-bluff is a bet or a raise you make with a hand that probably isn’t ahead, but it has the possibility of winning on a later round.

The classic example is on the flop in a Texas holdem game when you have 4 cards to a flush and you’re facing a single opponent who you think has a medium pair.

He’s ahead of you, but you get 2 more cards.

If you bet into this pot, he might fold. You’ll win the pot right there and then.

But some of the time, he’ll call.

Texas Holdem Strategy Chart

When he does, you have about a 1 in 3 probability of winning at the showdown by hitting your flush.

Most beginners know what bluffing is, but they don’t know what a semi-bluff is and don’t semi-bluff often at all.

It should be a go-to move for a Texas holdem player.

Play within Your Bankroll

You should have enough money set aside to play Texas holdem with that you’re not stressed out about every bet on every hand. Scared money always loses.

This depends, in part, on your goals as a player.

If you’re just playing recreationally, and you don’t care about the money, it’s okay to play with a smaller bankroll than you would play with if you were trying to play professionally.

The idea behind bankroll management in poker is that you want to avoid going broke because you had a run of bad luck.

This means not playing in games where the bankroll is more than 5% (or 2%) of your total bankroll. In some cases – if you’re conservative – it might mean having 150 times your buy-in as a bankroll.

Most experts agree that the bankroll requirements for a sit-n-go tournament player are different from the bankroll requirements for a multi-table tournament player.

If you want to make optimal poker decisions, you need to have a big enough bankroll that you’re willing to bet and raise when you have a small edge.

Pay Attention

I’ve known a lot of ABC poker players who don’t pay attention to hands they’re not playing in. Once they’ve folded, they just watch television or daydream.

If you’re going to increase your chances of winning at poker, you need to pay attention to how your opponents play the game.

Every hand they provide you with information about their playing tendencies, whether you’re paying attention or not.

If you have an opponent who raises every time he sees a flop, you won’t know his tendency unless you’ve been paying attention to how he plays.

In fact, most opponents aren’t this predictable. You should pay attention to your opponents’ ranges.

Do they bet into the pot 50% of the time? 70% of the time?

What do they do most of the time on the turn and the river?

Understanding these tendencies is critical to winning against such opponents.

Read a Book (Or Several)

Some poker players are naturals and learn everything they need to know at the table.

Reading Harrington on Holdem isn’t going to do anything but improve your game, no matter how much experience you have at the table.

Holdem Betting Strategy

At least read David Sklansky’s Theory of Poker.

You can pay for tutoring and coaching. You can even buy a MasterClass membership and learn from Daniel Negreanu and Phil Ivey.

I lost at poker big-time and consistently until I started reading books about the game. The first book about poker I ever read was Andy Bellin’s Poker Nation, which isn’t the best strategy guide ever.

But for a beginner, it was a lifesaver.

Take Care of Your Health

This probably sounds like some frou-frou hippy-dippy nonsense, but if you take better care of your health, you’ll make better decisions at the poker table.

This means drinking enough water, eating a variety of nutritious food, getting enough rest, and exercising regularly.

A Texas holdem player isn’t an athlete in the traditional sense, but a strong mind resides in a strong body – so do what you need to do to keep your body healthy and strong.

Some very talented poker players have destroyed their poker careers and their lives by abusing drugs and alcohol. Read about Stu Ungar if you want a specific example.

Conclusion

You increase your chances of winning at Texas holdem by becoming a more skilled player.

At lower stakes, this probably just means folding more often and betting or raising more often than you’re doing now.

When you start playing for higher stakes, it will take more effort to be a winner.

But it’s worth the hard work.

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.

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.

Texas Holdem Rules And Strategy

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.

Texas Holdem Betting Strategy Chart

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:

Texas Hold'em Betting Strategy

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

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.