What Is The Ante In Texas Holdem Poker
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 Is The Ante In Texas Holdem Poker Tournaments
- What Is The Ante In Texas Holdem Poker Real Money
- What Is The Ante In Texas Holdem Poker Wsop
- What Is The Ante In Texas Holdem Poker Vegas World
Ante in Texas Hold’em poker as well as blinds are therefore required from the players themselves in order to get the action started. When you hear the term ante, it refers to a certain amount of money that is placed in the pot by all the players at the table before the cards are dealt. Like other forms of poker, Ultimate Texas Hold ’Em is played with a single 52-card standard deck of cards. Players start off by making a blind and ante bet. Unlike traditional Texas Hold ‘Em variations, however, these two wagers must be equal. There is also an optional Trips side bet which pays regardless of whether your hand wins or loses.
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.
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.
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.)
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:
Hand | Payout |
Royal flush | 500 to 1 |
Straight flush | 50 to 1 |
4 of a kind | 10 to 1 |
Full house | 3 to 1 |
Flush | 3 to 2 |
Straight | Even money |
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:
Hand | Payout |
Royal flush | 50 to 1 |
Straight flush | 40 to 1 |
4 of a kind | 30 to 1 |
3 of a kind | 8 to 1 |
Full house | 8 to 1 |
Flush | 6 to 1 |
Straight | 5 to 1 |
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:
- 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.
In an effort to speed up the game, poker tournaments are experimenting with a tweaked process for posting antes called the “Big Blind Ante.”
In Big Blind Ante games, instead of each player posting an ante at the beginning of a hand, the BB antes for the entire table.
So far, players overwhelmingly like the big blind ante format. Not only does it speed up the game, it also eliminates the need to keep small denomination chips in play past their usefulness.
But not everything is peachy keen with the new structure.
A debate over what comes first, the ante or the blind bets players are required to post at the start of each hand, has overtaken Poker Twitter.
The debate almost exclusively involves high-stakes poker players and tournament directors, with the two sides arguing player preference vs. fairness.
What Is The Ante In Texas Holdem Poker Tournaments
The two sides of the debate
Poker players are focused on what players would prefer, citing the disappointment an extremely short-stacked player would feel if they were only capable of winning their chips back (the antes) in an all-in situation.
Tournament directors are more interested in changing the long-established norm of antes being posted before the blinds, and whether or not doing the opposite is “fair” to everyone.
The conversation is mainly centered around a situation where a player is extremely short-stacked, and the two radically different outcomes that ante-first or big-blind-first create:
Ante 1st scenario. pic.twitter.com/scZaRLqDnm
— Willie Elliot (@Willie_Hmmm) March 18, 2018
BB 1st scenario. pic.twitter.com/sGpW0ZJHaL
— Willie Elliot (@Willie_Hmmm) March 18, 2018
Considering the infrequency and insignificance of the scenario, it may seem trivial. However, there is an important component to this conversation most people are overlooking: game integrity.
Game integrity
In the BB ante format, the big blind is posting the antes for the entire table. That means that each player at the table owes that player a single ante, and the debt is paid when they are in the big blind and pay the antes for the table.
Steve Badger did a good job explaining one scenario where game integrity could be compromised if the ante is considered before the big blind on Twitter:
And it’s not simply a potential issue in unlikely end-of-game scenarios.
Imagine the same all-in situation only it’s the first-hand of a nine-handed single-table-tournament, where each player starts with 100 chips, and there is a two-chip small blind, a four-chip big blind, and a one-chip ante.
On the first hand, each player should have an equal number of chips, but that’s not the case. The big blind is short eight chips that have been “lent” to the other players at the table. In an all-in situation, the big blind is unduly penalized, since they can’t win any other player’s entire stack.
Further, if the BB is eliminated they would never have an opportunity to recoup the chips they are still owed.
If the BB calls an all-in their effective stack is 91 chips (4 chips from the blind and 87 remaining in their stack). On the flip side, the other players are playing a stack of 100 chips. The under-the-gun player can win 102 chips — the 15 chips in the pot plus 87 chips from their opponent — leaving the losing player with nine chips.
What Is The Ante In Texas Holdem Poker Real Money
Now fast forward a few hands. Suppose the losing player was the small blind and is now the big blind. In an ante-first scenario they would first have to obligate their debts to the other players and would only be able to win the nine chips they ante. In the BB-first scenario they would be eligible to win the blinds, four chips from any player who calls, and the partial five-chip ante they posted.
- Ante-first with three callers: All-in player wins 9 chips.
- BB-first with three callers: All-in player wins 23 chips.
Yes, this is great for the short-stack, but how should the original BB feel about this player that should have been eliminated now sitting on 23 chips and only partially paying their antes? In practice this player shorting the antes means they managed to avoid paying antes for four of the ninee hands that were played.
In no other part of the casino would this be allowed to happen. If you can’t cover the main bet on a table game you’re not allowed to put money on the jackpot bet.
Considering the lending component and the possibility of unfairness, I don’t know if big blind before ante would stand up to regulatory scrutiny, and if a gaming commission really wanted to be a stickler, the lending element of the BB ante format could also be disallowed – although I doubt a gaming commission would go that far.
The problem with fixing problems
What was implemented as a way to speed up the ante process has somehow turned into a debate over what’s more friendly for recreational players.
The big blind before antes side isn’t making the case from a game mechanic standpoint, in fact, the only logic for it is that it makes the short-stacked player feel better, hence it’s believed to be player-friendly and good for the game.
That may be true, and this issue may be inconsequential enough to not matter from a game integrity standpoint (although I’m not convinced it is), but that doesn’t make the “we don’t want a player to feel bad” argument a good one.
It seems to me they shouldn’t be given any extra advantage just because they can’t afford to pay what they are due to the pot.
— Willie Elliot (@Willie_Hmmm) March 18, 2018
Key takeaway #1
Even if “big blind first” is the best practice for players, it might not pass muster with gaming commissions, and we need to consider all of the different scenarios where a player may be able to game the system in some way.
What Is The Ante In Texas Holdem Poker Wsop
Eliminating the requirement that new players post a blind or wait for the blind would also be “player-friendly,” but that rule is in place for a reason – people have found ways to take advantage of it and/or it’s simply unfair to the other players.
What Is The Ante In Texas Holdem Poker Vegas World
Key takeaway #2
In the grand scheme of things, none of this will likely matter. It looks like the BB ante structure is here to stay, and tournament directors and players will eventually hash out the chicken or the egg part of it with consideration given to player-friendliness and game fairness.
But to pretend this is just a matter of preference is wrong. There is a legitimate game integrity and fairness concern.