Ultimate Texas Holdem Strategy Guide: Rules for Winning

A lot of Texas Hold 'Em strategy is based on the cards in your hand. You must be willing to suffer through a series of poor hands (e.g. 5-8, 2-6, 4-9) without getting impatient. You must be willing to suffer through a series of poor hands (e.g. 5-8, 2-6, 4-9) without getting impatient. The What: Push/Fold strategy is exactly what it sounds like: Reducing your list of options to either moving all-in or folding your hand before the flop. The Why: When your stack gets below 10 big blinds you can no longer afford to spend chips by limping or raising, only to fold later in the hand. This is the most basic foundation of any winning Texas Holdem strategy. Don't get sucked into playing bad hands like so many amateurs do! Playing in Position is Winning Poker My next Texas Holdem tip is to make sure that you are playing the majority of your hands from the preflop charts above when you are in position. Poker Cheat Sheet For Texas Holdem: How To Use This Texas Holdem Poker Cheat Sheet. Step 1: Find your hand on the chart (example KT suited) Step 2: Determine whether you should follow coloured or number schematic. Step 3: Take into account information give under headings preflop and post flop. Step 4: Take home some cash.

Don’t let the above title fool you – there’s no way to guarantee a profit in any casino game. But if you play your cards right, a good Ultimate Texas Holdem strategy can drop the house edge to 0.526%. Play it wrong, and the house edge will start at 2.85%, increasing with every bad decision made.

The first thing you need to know is that there’s a big difference between Texas Holdem Poker and Ultimate Texas Holdem. The former is a player-vs-player game that often involves bluffing and outwitting your opponents through mental aptitude.

Despite its similar appearance, Ultimate Texas Holdem is completely differently. This is a house-banked game that offers to such psychological advantage. It’s player-vs-dealer, and only the best hand wins. Therefore you’ll need a completely different Ultimate Texas Holdem strategy to win more often.

Ultimate Texas Holdem Rules

The rules of the game are simple, especially if you already know how to play Texas Holdem poker. Here’s a quick rundown of game play.

– 1 standard 52-card deck I used, reshuffled after every hand.
– Player makes equal Ante and Blind bet to start.
– Player and dealer each dealt 2 hole cards (face down); player may look at own cards.
– Player will either Check or Raise, with Raise equal to 3x or 4x the Ante.
– Three community cards are dealt (face up).
– If Player checked before, he may Check again or Raise 2x the Ante. If a Raise was already placed, no further bets can be placed.
– Final two community cards are dealt.
– Player must Raise equal to Ante if he’s checked on both previous rounds, or Fold. If a Raise was already placed, no further bets can be placed.
– Player and Dealer set highest ranking hands from their own hole cards and community cards.
– Highest ranking hand wins. Dealer must have Any Pair or better to “qualify”.

Ultimate Texas Holdem Payouts

Remember, there are three bets that may (or may not) win here; the Blind, the Ante and the Raise. The relative payouts and dealer hand qualifications are as follows.

– If the Player wins and the Dealer qualifies, Blind, Ante and Raise bets win.
– If the Player wins and the Dealer does not qualify, Blind and Raise bets win; Ante is a push.
– If the Dealer wins and qualifies, Blind, Ante and Raise bet are lost.
– If the Dealer wins and does not qualify, Blind and Raise bets are lost; Ante is a push.
– In the case of Tie, all bets push regardless of dealer qualification.

Blind Bet Pays: Ante and Raise bets are always paid even money. Blind bets pay according to the following pay table, based on the player’s progressive hand ranks.

– Royal Flush Pays 500 to 1
– Straight Flush Pays 50 to 1
– Four of a Kind Pays 10 to 1
– Full House Pays 3 to 1
– Flush Pays 3 to 2
– Straight Pays 1 to 1
– All Others are a Push

Ultimate Texas Holdem Strategy

The biggest takeaway from the rules section is that the amount a player is allowed to Raise will decrease with each passing round of play. Either way, a Raise (aka Play Bet) must be made at some point, or the player must fold.

There’s a very basic chart players can use to ensure they are always making the right move. Note that this is an Ultimate Texas Holdem strategy for beginners, and that more advanced tactics can be applied later.

Note: If you’re dealt a pair in the hole, always Raise pre-flop unless they’re 2s (Raise after flop if 2s). For all other hands, follow this Ultimate Texas Holdem strategy chart. If your hand still falls into the “N” column after all community cards are dealt, fold.

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Only starting out with poker in 2020?

I remember when I started with poker, I found remembering the important parts of the game challenging.

But your journey can become easier with this printable poker cheat sheet for beginners (I wish I had this when starting out!).

Table Of Contents

• How To Use This Texas Holdem Poker Cheat Sheet.
• How To Use This Pot Odds Cheat Sheet – Facing River Bet Example
• How To Use This Pot Odds Cheat Sheet – Facing Flop Bet Example
• Poker Hands Cheat Sheet: Best Texas Hold em Hands

Poker Cheat Sheet For Texas Holdem:

Download the high-quality Poker Cheat Sheet printable (PDF) version:

The cheat sheet includes hyperlinks for further reading on any material you may not yet know.

Click here for more information on pre-flop and post-flop. We also discuss Texas Holdem bet sizing in the highlighted link.

If you like the cheat sheet, you may also enjoy these these awesome starting hand charts from upswing poker. They are a more detailed version of the starting hands section in the cheat sheet above which supplement it nicely. Amazingly they have been downloaded almost 200,000 times!

How To Use This Texas Holdem Poker Cheat Sheet.

Step 1: Find your hand on the chart (example KT suited)

Step 2: Determine whether you should follow coloured or number schematic.

Either:

• If first to raise (no other player has raised before you), follow the coloured schematic.
• If facing a raise or reraise, follow the numbered schematic.

Note: If playing on a 6max table (6 players as opposed to 9), the yellow coloured hands will also be able to be played from any position.

See the image below for the numbered and colour schematic.

Step 3: Take into account information give under headings preflop and post flop.

How to play poker preflop is a tough subject to cover in detail. There are many factors you need to take into account such as:

• Your position and your opponents position.
• Your opponents likely holdings
• Board texture
• Previous history

A brief explanation of why position is powerful and why we play fewer hands when there are more players left to act (still with a hand):

When playing on a fullring table, you will have to contend with nine players, who each have a chance of picking up a big hand. Therefore, when playing a full ring game, you will play fewer hands. You can read more on this concept at fullring vs. 6max.

The difference in player numbers is also why we play a wide range of hands from the Button, but very few hands from UTG (first position). When opening the Button, we only have two players left to act (unlikely for them to have a strong hand), whereas when playing from UTG in a full ring game, eight other players could potentially pick up a big hand.

For more in-depth details on this see Texas Holdem Strategy and Position is King!

Step 4: Take home some cash

Hopefully, this poker cheat sheet will help you ‘bring home the bacon' as they say, but there is always something more to learn in poker. Keep reading for some more cheat sheets which might be of use to you.

Get Your Miniature (Credit Card Sized) Texas Holdem Starting Hands Cheat Sheet

This cheat sheet only contains the most vital information you need so it can handily fit in your pocket. The legends have also been squeezed onto the hand chart in front of hands we always fold.

To download printable PDF which is scaled to credit card size, use the Facebook unlock button:

Poker Odds Cheat Sheet (for Texas Hold'em)

Get your pot odds cheat sheet below. You can use this to determine the number of outs required to continue based on the pot odds you are being offered. You can also use it to convert between percentages, required outs and ratios for all kinds of situations in poker. The pot odds cheat sheet is explained in more detail below:

Click here to get a high-quality printable pdf version of the Poker Odds Cheat Sheet.

When your opponent bets you will be offered odds based on the size of his bet. For example, if your opponent bets half pot you will be offered odds of 3:1 on a call (call 1 to win 3). Essentially, it is your risk to reward ratio.

Pot odds will tell you whether is it correct for you to call or fold based on what size our opponent bet and how many cards that will improve our hand.

If you are interested in the learning poker math, check out our best poker books recommendation page here for some awesome books on poker math.

How To Use This Pot Odds Cheat Sheet – Facing River Bet Example

1. Work out pot odds

In this hand, our opponent bets $26 into a $41.5 pot making the total pot size $67.5. This gives us odds of 67.5: 26 (67.5 = 41.5+26). Or approximately 2.6:1. You can also see how to convert this into a percentage in our article pot odds.

2. Find 2.6:1 on the card (or as close to it as possible).

We locate 2.6:1 on the chart tells us that 2.6:1 translates to 30.11% pot equity. In other words:

• if we win 30% of the time, we will break even,
• if we win > 30% of the time we will make a profit on average in this situation
• if we win <30% of the time, we will make a loss on average in this situation

3. Determine our actual equity

This is the tough part, unfortunately.

You have to estimate how often you are beaten by your opponent in order to determine if you can profitably call or not. To do this you can use a program such as equilab to plug in hands that you think your opponent may have and the hand that you currently hold. To learn more about estimating what your opponent may be holding see the article poker hand range: the comprehensive beginner guide. From the example above, we plug in some hands we think our opponent may have and see that we have 34% equity:

4. Determine if we can profitably call.

Since our equity is greater than our pot odds, we can profitably call the river bet. If our equity were less than the pot odds being offered, we would have to fold as we cannot c call.

How To Use This Pot Odds Cheat Sheet – Facing Flop Bet Example

Let's take a similar situation (confronted with a bet), except this time we are on the flop with KQs, and we have a flush draw with nine outs. A King and Queen which could be considered outs, but they aren't clean outs. This means even if we hit our hand we still may not win (say for example our opponent has AA).

1. Work out equity percentage:

Since we have nine clean outs, we can simply go to the number 9 on the card and then determine our equity.

This means that we need a minimum pot odds of 1.9:1 or 38% when we have nine outs on the flop with two cards still to come.

3. Compare pot odds to odds given by bettor.

Our equity is 38%, so we need pot odds of less than 38%. The lower the pot odds, the more profitable the call.

Our pot odds are 12.5/33 which is 37%, and hence we just about have the pot odds to call. However, we are also in positon (and will act last with more information) and have two overcards to the board (both a King and Queen will make top pair good kicker). So this is an easy call.

4. Further reading

We need seven outs to continue, and we have nine outs with a flush draw. See calculating outs for more details.

For more information on how to use this poker cheat sheet see poker and pot odds.

This video will also be useful to you:

Poker Hands Cheat Sheet: Best Texas Hold em Hands

In case you aren't familiar with the hand strengths, and hand rankings of poker check out the printout Texas Holdem hands cheat sheet:

(You may also be interested in the rules of texas hold em)

There are a few important things to remember when memorising at the poker hand rankings:

Best Five Cards Win

In poker, it is always the best five cards wins. This means it is not only the pairs that matter if there is no clear winner (nobody has a pair), the decision will go down to high card wins.

Kickers

Kickers decide the winning hand when two opponents have the same pair or three of a kind. For example, if one opponent has AQ (ace-queen) and another has AJ, the opponent with AQ would win on an A7522 board as he has the five card hand of AAQ75 whereas the second opponent has AAJ75.

Split Pots

Split pots occur when opponents have the same hand. For example, imagine one opponent has A4 and the other A3 on AQ752 board. Both opponents would have five card hand of AAQ75. Neither the 4 or 3 would play.

You can get more information about hand rankings on our web page here.

If you are more visually inclined, check out this video on poker hand rankings:

For more on Texas Hold'em strategy, see poker 101.

Make sure you check out the fan favourite posts:

Common poker mistakes & Texas Holdem Poker Tips

Texas Hold'em Pre Flop Strategy Chart

Good luck at the poker tables with your new poker cheat sheet!

Texas Holdem Betting Strategy Chart

Texas Holdem Betting Strategy Chart