Ultimate Texas Holdem from Evolution Gaming

Evolution Gaming launched Ultimate Texas Hold’em Poker in August 2016, adding to their growing list of live dealer poker games.

Naturally, this is another house game…the aim being to beat the dealer, not other seated players. Standard poker hand ranks apply and as in pier to pier Texas Hold’em, you are trying to create the best possible 5-card poker hand from 2 pocket cards, and 5 community cards.

The game is dealt from a single deck, manually shuffled after each round.

How to play

You begin by  placing an Ante bet. An identical amount is added to the Blind bet box.

You (and all other seated players) are then dealt 2 pocket cards face up, and the dealer takes 2 pockets, face down.

At this point you are given the option to CHECK or RAISE. If you RAISE, you lose any further opportunities to RAISE.

The Flop is then dealt, and if you haven’t already raised, you are asked to make a CHECK or RAISE decision. Once again, a decision to RAISE, forfeits any further raise options.

The Turn and River are then dealt, and provided you have not already exercised an option to raise, another  CHECK or RAISE opportunity presents.

Note also, that your raise multipliers decrease as you get further into the deal round.

The dealer’s cards are then revealed…

Win/loss conditions

Whether or not the dealer’s hand qualifies (pair or better) is important is in determining which of your bets are paid out.

a) Dealer’s hand qualifies…

• dealer has a better hand: the Ante, Play and Blind bets and any side bets are lost.
• player has a better hand: the Ante and Play bets pay 1:1, and the Blind bet is settled based on Blind payout rules.
• player and dealer hands tie:  the Ante , Play and Blind bets are returned (“Push”).

b) Dealer’s hand doesn’t qualify…

• dealer has a better hand: Ante bet is returned to you (“Push”), but you do not receive Play and Blind payouts
• player has a better hand: Ante bet is returned to you (“Push”), and you receive 1:1 on the Play bet and Blind payouts according to payout table.
• player and dealer hands tie: Ante, Play and Blind bets are returned.

Blind  payouts…

Trips side bet

In addition to the main game you can bet on the quality of the player hand by betting in the Trips bet area, with payouts as below. If the dealer qualifies, and beats the player hand, the Trip side bet is lost.

Return to player

Frugal players will want to give this one a miss. Played optimally, Ultimate Texas Hold’em Poker returns 96.50% to the player.

Full house rules

…are here

Where to play

The first 2 live casinos to offer Ultimate Texas Hold’em Poker were Bwin and Unibet.  William Hill and 888 will no doubt have it up and running within days.

Video recording