I consider Ultimate Texas Hold’em (UTH) to be the ultimate casino game. I don’t say that just because I played a part in its creation. I played no part in the creation of video poker, but still consider it to be a transformational creation for the casino. What makes UTH as close to perfection as possible is its unique betting structure.
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It was a lot of years ago that Roger Snow brought to me the first version of the game. The Texas Hold’em boom was well under way. Another company had created a successful table game variant – Texas Hold’em Bonus Poker (THBP) – and Roger’s own version, Big Raise Hold’em, had not fared well.
For those not familiar with the invention process, it is rather rare to have all aspects of a game worked out on the first attempt. Even if the game mechanics seem fine, there are many aspects of the math that come into focus as the analysis begins. It is not just about the payback. Imagine the game of Three Card Poker, if the fold rate was 45%. Would the game still be as much fun with the player throwing away his hand nearly half of the time? Probably not.
In a Texas Hold’em game, there are many moving parts compared to Three Card Poker. In the original poker game, you get two cards and make a decision. Then three community cards are dealt and you make a decision. Then the turn card and another decision. Finally, the river and yet another decision.
In order to make the game more amenable to the table game space, it was decided the last two community cards would be dealt together. While this may change the feel of the game to the purist, this greatly speeds up the table game version, and since you are playing only against the dealer the impact is minimal.
The more obvious version of a Texas Hold’em table game would simply have the player make an initial wager and then get his cards. He would then make additional wager(s) after two cards, five cards (the Flop) and perhaps after seeing all his cards. Of course, this would have also made UTH a lot more like THBP, and Roger was looking for something different.
As we were working on about version 42 of the game, it was at 2 a.m. on a Saturday night (east coast time) when Roger suggested a betting structure of allowing the player to wager more earlier in the game and as he got more cards, he would be allowed to bet less and less. I had to give this quite a bit of thought as the math on this betting structure is a lot more difficult than the traditional Bet/Check or Bet/Fold decisions.
Now, what you do earlier has an impact on what you can do later and vice versa. If this was a three card game, I could run every possible scenario. But with seven cards for player and dealer, the analysis was going to be daunting.
In the end, UTH was the most complex game I ever analyzed. My final report has a “simplified” strategy that almost no human could truly follow. If you could play it computer perfect, the payback may go as high as 99.75%. The more complex the strategy, the closer the payback could get to 100%. But would casinos really put in a game that has an established “playable” payback at 99.25%-99.5%?
Casinos were already changing the payouts on blackjack to 6 to 5 to avoid its 99.5% payback. The reality is UTH’s strategy makes blackjack strategy look like child’s play. But the real secret would only reveal itself after the game went live and began to get more successful.
It is really a two part secret. Allowing the player to bet 4x after seeing only his two hole cards turned out to be a blessing and a curse; 4x is a LOT of money to most players. If you’re playing at a $10 table, you already have $20 down ($10 Ante and $10 Blind). Now, you have to think about wagering another $40 having seen only two cards!
If the game of UTH was built like THBP, the player would be making a Play/Fold decision here, but UTH was built so the player could simply check at this point. We know from watching people play, they check at this point way more often than they should. That is what makes UTH the perfect game.
The player always sees his full hand before having to decide to fold. As a result, the number of hands the player actually wins is pretty close to the amount he should theoretically win. Sure, some players will fold hands they should not, but not many.
What does change from the theoretical is how much a player wins when he wins. A player has a strong pocket hand but chooses not to wager 4x when he should. In the end, he wins the hand, but only wins 2x or 1x. He is as happy as can be, but in reality, he’s killing his bankroll – all on a 99.5% payback game!
The player is happy. The casino is happy. What more could you ask for!
It was about 10 years ago that the Texas Hold’em craze was starting to take over poker rooms everywhere. I used to play a lot of poker in college (won a lot of spending money).
I don’t think we played a single hand of Texas Hold’em. We played 7-card Stud, Guts, 5-card Draw and a whole host of other strange games like nighttime baseball. It’s what you get when you play Dealer Choice poker for several hours. But, not one hand of Texas Hold’em.
I had no idea what the game was until I saw signs for it in Las Vegas poker rooms. Even then, I paid it very little attention.
Somehow, in the 21st century, Texas Hold’em became the game you had to play. I personally think it happened when some popular young actors started playing it.
Once the craze happened, it was only a matter of time before inventors were going to try and replicate the feeling of Texas Hold’em in a casino table game against the Dealer. There were several entries, but for the first couple of years, the market was dominated by Texas Hold’em Bonus Poker. This was owned and invented by a company called Progressive Gaming aka Mikohn (now defunct).
This put a lot of pressure on Roger Snow of Shuffle Master to come up with something that could compete with THBP. I’m not sure how many iterations we went through before we started zeroing in on a version we liked. My recollection says it was 20 or 30 variations.
I remember it was 2 a.m. on a Saturday in New Jersey when the idea of the 4x, 2x, 1x betting strategy came up. We liked it a lot. I spent the next few days proving out the math and it worked. Ultimate Texas Hold’em was born.
That 4x, 2x, 1x betting pattern was unique to UTH. You could bet only once in the game. The earlier you bet, meaning the less information you had, the more you could wager. You could check all the way until you saw the entire hand, but then it was bet or Fold. To this day, I think it was a stroke of genius.
At the time, I don’t think we realized just how beautiful it really was. It wasn’t just that the Player can bet only once, or the earlier he bets the more he bets. It was the 4x that was the real beauty.
That scares the daylights out of most players. If you tell them they have to bet 2x (or even 4x), they learn to live with it. But give them a choice to bet 1x, 2x, 4x or check and the Player becomes far more timid.
Look at blackjack where players have the option to Double Down. I submit that you see players not double down when they should, far more than doubling down when they shouldn’t. Players are more timid than we realize except for that guy who still insists on splitting 10’s/faces!
If Players are scared to wager 2x when they should, imagine what 4x does to them. In UTH, you are already playing $10-$15 at a $5 table (Ante, Blind, Sidebet). Now you have to put up an additional $20 if you decide you want to go 4x. If you come in with a $100 bankroll, it might be one-third gone in one hand. To most players, it makes sense to simply wait a few seconds, get three more cards and if the hand pans out, bet 2x.
The problem with this is the game math was all designed to assume the player is not timid, but plays mathematically correct. Ironically, the 4x wager is the easiest of the three potential strategy points to learn. Also, at 4x, it accounts for a very large amount of our payback.
UTH offers over 99% payback. But, playing it timid can easily double or triple the house advantage. Wagering more or less does not impact whether you will win the hand or not. So, if the player wins only 2x, he still feels like he won and is happy. If he loses betting 2x (after thinking about betting 4x), he’s happy not to lose more.
It’s a win-win situation only for the casino. Ultimate Texas Hold’em has one of the smallest house advantages in the casino yet boasts one of the highest holds. A good deal of this is simply because so few people have any idea of any of the strategy.
A good portion of this also comes from people who probably have figured out the right 4x strategy (or know it from reading my articles) and still shy away from playing it.
This is the truly amazing part of the betting structure. On the one hand, the players are happy they have the choice and frequently are happy even when they make the wrong decision. The casinos love being able to offer a game that boasts a 99% payback yet holds like a game with a 97% payback.
Players should wager 4x 38% of the time. Here is the right strategy:
• If the Player is dealt any Pair except for 2’s, he should Raise 4x.
• If the Player is dealt an Ace, he should Raise 4x.
• If the Player is dealt a suited K-X, where X is a card of the same suit.
• If the Player is dealt a suited Q-X, where X is greater than a 4.
• If the Player is dealt a Suited J-X, where X is greater than a 7.
• If the Player is dealt an unsuited K-X, where X is greater than a 4.
• If the Player is dealt an unsuited Q-X, where X is greater than a 7.
• If the Player is dealt an unsuited J-10.
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Ultimate Texas Holdem
Elliot Frome is a second generation gaming analyst and author. His math credits include Ultimate Texas Hold’em, Mississippi Stud, House Money and many other games. His website is www.gambatria.com. Contact Elliot at [email protected].