That means some pretty big changes to the poker hand rankings, game dynamics and to standard Texas Holdem strategy. 1) The Short Deck To play Short Deck Hold’em you take a regular 52-card deck and remove the twos, threes, fours, and fives. You end up with a 36-card deck in which the six is the lowest card – unless the ace is low, of course. 6-Max Online Poker Strategy. Ultimate Guide For Playing 6-Max Table Games. Many Texas Hold'em players transition from full-ring games (nine or 10 players) to six-max poker, as it allows you to. Fun, Fact & Strategy. Sit and Goes columns & quizzes. No-Limit Hold'em columns & quizzes. Fixed Limit Hold'em columns & quizzes. Miscellaneous Poker books To supplement our articles, videos, quizzes, and hand discussion forums we have prepared a list of the best-reviewed poker books on the market.

Good Texas Hold'em Strategy

Although it's possible to talk about Texas Hold'em strategy indefinitely, due to the game's subtle complexities, we've compiled three of the most salient pieces of poker advice every aspiring pro should know.

Strategy and notice it for what it was, advertising a bluff to induce action. However, in online poker, there are more poor players than observant players and you see so many different players they do not have a good read on you from previous sessions. Remember, Hold’em is a showdown game. By playing tight and aggressive. Hold’em Strategy: The 5 Golden Rules If you asked a hundred people to explain the difference between strategy and tactics, not a lot would get it right. Tactics are short-term while strategy involves long term planning - and that is the basic difference.

Pulling off fancy bluffs and check-raising the river with a small value bet may be enticing propositions. However, if you haven't mastered the basics, then you'll never have the ability to play like Phil Ivey and run these sorts of complex plays.

With this in mind, here are some good strategies online players with a burgeoning bankroll should commit to memory.

Cut Down the Amount of Hands You Play

One of the biggest mistakes novice players make when they first start playing Texas Hold'em is to get involved in too many hands.

Although the prospect of making a strong hand or bluffing our opponent is appealing, it's can actually be a major drain on your bankroll if you get involved in a lot of pots.

One important fact to remember is that if you play a lot of hands you will make a pair less than two-thirds of the time and this often means you'll have to fold a lot post-flop.

Secondly, if you do manage to make a hand it will be usually be weaker than average, which means you'll lose pots (and therefore money) at showdown more often.

Be More Aggressive

Coupled with a habit of playing more hands than is profitable, newbies will often adopt a passive strategy when they enter a pot.

Instead of raising or re-raising they will usually limp or call and allow another player to take control of the hand. This is potentially fatal because it means the passive player is more likely to be bullied into submission and, therefore, lose the pot.

There's an old adage in poker that you should try to remember if you want to avoid being passive and make more money: 'If a hand is not worth raising, then it's not worth playing.'

Be More Active

Although standard online Texas Hold'em strategy advocates that you take regular breaks, the reality is that most professional grinders never stray too far from their computers.

It may not be the right thing to do, but many online poker pros will put in 18-hour sessions without a second thought for their health, or, indeed, the health of their bankroll.

In the world of Texas Hold'em online, volume is king and if you aren't prepared to sit for hours on end at a computer then being a professional isn't for you.

Always Try and Play in Position

Position is king at the poker table and before you enter any pot you should consider where you are in relation to the button, the blinds and to any active players. Essentially this means you should play more hands the closer you are to the button because you'll have the benefit of extra information. Sometimes playing out of position is unavoidable, but if you want to have the greatest advantage over your opponents it's important to always play in position.

Get Ready With Your HUD

Hand reading is a basic tenet of good poker, but when you're an online pro you can often get away with substandard powers of deduction by using your HUD. A Heads Up Display unit can uncover a multitude of tendencies on your opponent and help your decision making process immensely.

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.

Holdem 6 Strategy For Dummies

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.

Hold'em 6 Max Strategy

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.)

Holdem 6 Strategy Against

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.

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.

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:

Preflop, he suggests raising with any of the following hands:

3-6 Holdem Strategy

• 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.

Holdem Strategy Chart