Ultimate Texas Hold'em

Ante and blind, then raise exactly once — four times before the flop, twice after it, once on the river, or fold.

One raise — 4x, 2x or 1x

• 3streets
• 500:1blind
• exactriver odds

Manual

Post.

Ante and blind together, equal. The bonus bet is an optional side wager on your own five, paid whatever the dealer holds.

Raise once.

Four times the ante before the flop, twice after it, once on the river. Check all the way and you must either raise one ante or fold, surrendering ante and blind.

Dealer plays

with a pair or better. Against a dealer with no game the ante pushes instead of paying.

Blind

pays only on a straight or better — straight 1:1, flush 3:2, full house 3:1, quads 10:1, straight flush 50:1, royal 500:1. Anything less and it simply comes back.

The game

Ante and blind are posted together, equal, before a card moves. Then you raise exactly once, and the earlier you commit the more you may put out: four times the ante before the flop, twice once the flop is down, a single ante when the board is complete — or fold and surrender both ante and blind.

The blind is the price of that one-raise freedom. It pays extra only on a straight or better; any lesser win simply hands it back. The bonus bet is an optional side wager on your own final five cards, settled whatever the dealer holds.

The paytables

The blind and the bonus bet, per unit staked:

The ante-push rule

The dealer needs a pair to have a game. Against a dealer with no game the ante pushes regardless of the outcome: beat that dealer and the ante comes back instead of paying, lose to them and it still comes back while blind and play are lost. Only a fold surrenders it. The rule softens weak boards, and every number the ledger shows already has it priced in.

Tactics

The textbook 4x rule: raise four times the ante with any pair, any ace, and the stronger broadway holdings — king-five or better offsuit, any suited king, queen-eight offsuit or queen-six suited, jack-ten offsuit or jack-eight suited. The big raise is where the game is won; waiting halves it.

Checked to the flop, raise 2x when the flop pairs one of your hole cards; otherwise check again. On the river, put out the last single ante when your two cards improve on the board, and fold when they do not — the board alone cannot win you money.

That simplified line costs about 8.5% of the ante on this paytable, against a published 2.19% for perfect play. The gap is the price of the shortcut, not of the rules — and it is the point of the game: this game punishes an imprecise 4x decision harder than anything else on the floor.

Information

A card glimpsed in a neighbour’s hand is a card the dealer and the board can no longer hold, and the effect is anything but small. Holding ace-king over 30,000 measured deals, the clean win rate is 64.5%; seeing the other aces and kings in neighbouring hands collapses it to 39.8% — the cards that would have paired you are already spent.

In training the spy rail lets you mark any cards you like and watch the odds move. At a gold table the Sharp Eyes event shows three neighbour cards on every deal, and they are out of the deck for real: the flop, the turn, the river and the dealer’s hand are all drawn from what your information leaves behind.

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