Everything You Need to Know to Win at Casino Hold’em
Casino Hold’em is one of the newest casino table games you can play today. It is only 20-years old compared to blackjack and roulette which came about in the 1700s. Many live and online casinos offer Casino Hold’em thanks to its simplicity and popularity with poker players.
Stephen Au-Yeung created Casino Hold’em in the late 1990s. He devised the game to help him improve at the poker game Texas Hold’em. Au-Yeung realised he could turn this into a casino table game and did exactly that.
It first appeared in Egypt, Russia, and South Africa in the year 2000. The United Kingdom licensed Casino Hold’em for use in its casinos in 2007. Online casinos began spreading the game where it is sometimes called Texas Hold’em Poker.
Casino Hold’em Rules
The game shares its name with the poker game but you play against the house in Casino Hold’em. Each game is played with a 52-card deck and each player places an ante bet. The players and dealer receive two cards face down before three community cards are laid out.
The players check their cards and decided to fold or call. Folding ends their participation and the ante bet is lost. Calling required an additional bet twice the size of the initial ante.
The dealer places two more community cards on the board if at least one player calls. Both the player and the dealer have to make the best five-card poker hand using their two cards and the five community cards on the board.
Most variants require the dealer to have at least a pair of fours. The dealer wins all bets if his hand is better than the players. A push is declared if both the dealer and player’s hand is the same.
The player wins the ante bet, according to the ante win paytable, and the call bet is a push if the dealer doesn’t qualify. The player wins the ante bet and the call bet is paid 1-to-1 if the dealer qualifies but loses.
Traditional poker hand rankings are used to determine the winner. Those hands are, from strongest to weakest:
- Royal Flush
- Straight Flush
- Four of a Kind
- Full House
- Flush
- Straight
- Three of a Kind
- Two pair
- Pair
- High card
Typical Casino Hold’em Ante Payouts
The majority of online casinos follow the same payout table for the ante bet. 1-to-1 is the most common payout because that covers straights and lower. It is possible to win 100-times your bet if you make a Royal Flush but don’t expect this too often. These payouts create a house edge of 2.16%.
| Hand | Payout |
|---|---|
| Royal Flush | 100 to 1 |
| Straight Flush | 20 to 1 |
| Four of a kind | 10 to 1 |
| Full House | 3 to 1 |
| Flush | 2 to 1 |
| Straight or lower | 1 to 1 |
There is usually an AA bet, or a bonus bet. This pays out 7-to-1 on a pair of aces to a straight and other payouts as shown. This payout table results in a 6.26% house edge.
| Hand | Payout |
|---|---|
| Royal Flush | 100 to 1 |
| Straight Flush | 50 to 1 |
| Four of a kind | 40 to 1 |
| Full House | 30 to 1 |
| Flush | 20 to 1 |
| Pair of aces to a Straight | 7 to 1 |
Optimal Strategy
The great thing about Casino Hold’em is you play against the house and not other players. This makes it perfect if you don’t have a good poker face or are terrible at bluffing! There’s no bluffing involved at all and you only have to beat the dealer.
Optimal strategy is difficult to put into words or a table because of the vast number of possible holdings. You should be raising 82% of your hands and folding the worst 18% of hands. It’s worthwhile finding a poker hand calculator to see what these bottom 18% are.
In short, you should fold whenever you have two singletons as your hole cards that are low compared to the flop that have little to no chance of improving to a straight or flush.
Try Casino Hold’em today and see if you can take on and beat the house!
