Ultimate Texas Hold'em: how a hand goes

Your hand finishes as a flush, and the dealer’s hand, which holds a pair or better, is lower. In front of you sit four bets: the Ante, the Blind, a Play bet of 4 times the Ante, and Trips. What happens to each of the four bets?

The same nine cards, settled bet by bet. The $10 Ante and the $5 Trips bet are only an example bet: not a table minimum, and not a suggested bet. Amounts are in Canadian dollars.

Leoformer dealer · rules and maths

Four circles, four rules. The mistake I see most at this table is adding the four bets up as if they were one bet: the Ante goes one way, the Blind another, and the Trips bet does not look at the dealer at all.

Settle them one circle at a time, and say each rule to yourself before you look at the chips the dealer is moving.

How a hand goes

Ultimate Texas Hold’em is played against the dealer, not against the other players at the table. You get two cards of your own, five community cards are dealt face up in the middle, and your hand is the highest five-card poker hand you can make from those seven cards. The dealer’s hand is made the same way, from the dealer’s own two cards and the same five community cards.

The five cards picked out make your hand, flush, ace high; the other two cards play no part in it. A card on the board can belong to your hand and to the dealer’s hand at the same time.

When both hands are of the same kind, such as a pair of queens each, the cards decide one by one: first the cards that make the kind, then the other cards from the highest down. The first card that differs decides, and if all five match rank for rank, the two hands are equal.

Before any card is dealt you put the same amount in two circles, the Ante and the Blind, and both are required. A third circle, Trips, is optional: Trips is a side bet on your own hand alone.

Our own plan of one seat, not a copy of any room’s layout. The Ante and the Blind always hold the same amount; the Play circle stays empty until you choose to bet.

The Play bet is the one bet you choose during the hand, and it has three places where it can go down. A hand has room for one Play bet: once it is down, there is nothing more to bet. At the first two points you may check instead, which means placing no Play bet yet and staying in the hand.

1. Before the dealAnte and Blind$10 in each circle at an example bet, and Trips if you choose it
2. Your two cardsCheck, or Play 3 or 4 times the Antea Play bet of $30 or $40
3. The flop, three cardsIf no Play bet yet: check, or Play 2 times the Antea Play bet of $20
4. The last two cardsIf no Play bet yet: fold, or Play the same as the Antea Play bet of $10, or the Ante and the Blind given up

Each point offers a smaller Play bet than the one before it; skip all three and the hand ends in a fold, which gives up the Ante and the Blind. Which point to use, and with which cards, is lesson 9.4.

The higher hand, and the dealer’s pair

When the betting is done, the dealer turns over the dealer’s two cards. The dealer qualifies with a pair or better; without a pair, your Ante comes back, and every other bet is settled as usual.

Under the rules for B.C. casinos, a higher hand for you pays the Ante and the Play bet even money, a higher hand for the dealer takes the Play bet, the Ante and the Blind, and equal hands bring all three back.

Read across a row: a dealer without a pair changes only the Ante, which comes back whatever happens. The Play bet and the Blind are settled the same way in both columns.

Leoformer dealer · rules and maths

Watch the bottom right of that table. A dealer with nothing but ace high hands your Ante back and can still take your Play bet and your Blind, because the dealer’s ace high can be higher than your hand.

People who learned Three Card Poker first read a dealer who does not qualify as good news on every bet. In this game it changes the Ante only: the Ante comes back instead of being paid or lost.

The Blind

Under the rules for B.C. casinos the Blind is paid only when your hand is the higher one and is at least a straight; when your hand is higher but below a straight, the Blind comes back. When the dealer’s hand is higher, the Blind is lost along with the Ante and the Play bet.

• Higher, below a straightYou: Two pair, kings and jacksDealer: Two pair, kings and tensBlind comes back
• Higher, a straight or betterYou: Full house, threes over eightsDealer: Two pair, fours and threesBlind paid $30
• The dealer’s hand is higherYou: Pair of jacksDealer: Two pair, jacks and sixesBlind lost

Three hands, three outcomes for the same example $10 Blind. Whether the dealer qualified makes no difference to the Blind in any of the three.

A paid Blind is paid on its own table, which the rules for B.C. casinos and the rules for Quebec casinos print line for line the same. A guide for two rooms in Ontario states the same rule for the Blind and sends you to the layout for the odds.

A straight pays even money on the Blind, and every hand above a straight pays more.

Trips: a bet on your own hand

Under the rules for B.C. casinos, Trips is paid when your hand is three of a kind or better, whatever the dealer holds and whether or not the dealer qualifies. Below three of a kind it is lost, which happens on about 85 hands in 100.

The pay table is where the provinces differ. The rules for B.C. casinos print one table for Trips; the rules for Quebec casinos call the bet “Three of a Kind or More”, print a table of their own, and pay it on a three of a kind or better even after a fold. This page quotes that sentence for Quebec only and says nothing about a fold with Trips in other provinces: if you fold with a side bet down, ask the dealer how it is settled before your cards go in.

The two tables differ only on the four of a kind and the full house, the shaded rows, and those two rows move the price of the bet from 1.90% to 6.18% of every bet placed on that circle. No Canadian document we could read prints either percentage: both are our own count over every seven-card hand.

A guide for two rooms in Ontario and a page for a room in Manitoba describe the Trips bet without printing its pay table, and neither of the two tables above carries over to those rooms.

Under the rules for B.C. casinos, the Blind and Trips payouts to all players in one round are capped together at $50,000, and the Ante and the Play bet are outside that cap. The cap limits what the table pays out in a round to everyone together; it is not a limit on your bet.

What a hand and an hour cost

Nobody takes a cut of each hand at this table: the house edge is built into the payouts themselves. Counted over every card still to come and every hand the dealer can hold, with every decision made at the lowest cost, the whole hand — the Ante, the Blind and any Play bet — costs 2.185% of the Ante on average. No document we could read prints how to play every hand at the lowest cost, or what that costs: the optimal play behind this figure is our own count, and the decisions themselves are lesson 9.4.

No Canadian document we could read prints how many hands an hour this table deals. The Las Vegas Strip rating table has no row for this game either; the figure used here is its figure for Caribbean Stud, another poker game played against the dealer.

1. One hand$0.22the average price at an example $10 Ante, rounded to the cent
2. Hands in an hour50the Caribbean Stud figure in the Las Vegas Strip rating table
3. One hour$10.92on average, worked out from the unrounded price of one hand

The price of one hand is shown rounded to the cent, and the hour is worked out from the unrounded price, so multiplying the rounded cents by the hands lands a little away from the hour. The hour is a long-run average, not a forecast: one hour can come out well above it or well below it.

Trips has a price of its own, as well as the price of the game. At an example $5 Trips bet and the same 50 hands an hour, the side bet costs about $4.76 an hour under the rules for B.C. casinos and about $15.45 under the rules for Quebec casinos. Its percentage is a share of the Trips bet and the price of the game a share of the Ante, so compare the hours, not the percentages.

Mayaformer floor supervisor · manners, money and breaks

A raise of 4 times the Ante is a bigger bet on the same hand, so it has to fit the limit you set before you sat down, not the cards in front of you. Trips is optional on every single hand, and leaving it out is always allowed.

Decide the money and the time for the evening at home, and stop when either one runs out. A hand that went wrong is not a reason to bet bigger on the next one: lesson 10.3, Chasing losses, is about exactly that.

The lesson on one card

That is the lesson. Here it is on one card: print it, or keep it on your phone.

Practice: settle the four bets

Every hand in the practice run has already been played: all nine cards are face up, the move you made is named under the cards, and the bets sit on the table at an example $10 Ante. Level 1 deals hands where the dealer qualifies, and one fold. Level 2 deals hands where the dealer has no pair. Level 3 adds a $5 side bet and puts the Blind on its table, with two hands settled on the Quebec table. Those hands were picked to show each payout, so the side bet is paid here far more often than at a table.

Nothing is bet here, and no decision is asked of you: which point to raise at is lesson 9.4. The only question is how each bet is settled.

Check yourself

Mayaformer floor supervisor · manners, money and breaks

Four quick ones. Pick an answer, then check it. No timer, no points: just whether it stuck.

Back to the question we opened with. The flush settles each of the four bets by its own rule: the Ante and the Play bet even money against a dealer with a pair, the Blind on the Blind table, and Trips on the Trips table, whatever the dealer holds.

Where to go next, and further reading

19+ (18+ in AB, MB, QC) · Play responsibly · the helplines are further up this page

Further reading

• Rules of Play for Table Games — Poker · BCLCThe B.C. rules for Ultimate Texas Hold’em: when you may raise and by how much, the pair the dealer needs, and the Blind and Trips pay tables.
• Game rules: Ultimate Texas Hold’em Poker · Loto-QuébecQuébec’s rules, with the Three of a Kind or More side bet and its own pay table.
• Ultimate Texas Hold’em · OLG PlaySmartThe game against the dealer, and the hands PlaySmart lists for each betting round: four times the Ante before the flop, twice on the flop, call or fold on the river.

How it’s worked out