Canyonero's UTH strategy

Since all the strategies to play UTH I found seem way too complicated, I developed this...

Thoughts? Numbers? (I don't know any numbers, but I have tested this in simulation for hours and the deviations from perfect strategy seem minimal...)

Whenever rank is mentioned, you only count ranks NOT on the board.


Ultimate Texas Hold'em:

Raise / call with:

Preflop:
Ax; Kxs; K5o; Q6s; Q8o; J8s; JTo; 33+

Flop:
Any made pair
Offsuit: rank 5 Flush draw; open ended straight draw holding two cards 9+; any Flush + open ended straight draw
Suited: rank 4 Flush draw

River:
beating the board except high card
playing the board rank 3 Kicker on the board
unpaired board: rank 2 playing holecard
paired board: rank 3 playing holecard

Generally speaking, it's probably in the right direction but i'm not totally sure since the terminology is a bit confusing to me.

"nut holecard"? does that mean Ax in your hand or Kx on a A high board, etc?

and "playing the board rank 3 kicker"...does that mean something like:

7722Q and you have Jx or lower?

And when you say you "tested it, but have no numbers", did you just input random examples in an UTH calculator like the WOO has and the results generally fall in line?

Nut holecard: You are right, it means the highest unpaired card, like a Qx on AK724 board. However, I did some more testing today, and raising the nut holecard actually is the wrong play in more situations than it is right, so this is now a check. Will edit original post...

You have got the rank thing right, but in the case of playing the board, it refers to the kicker on the board, in your example 7722Q that would be the Queen, which is rank 3, so it would be a call. 7722J would be a fold (rank 4 kicker).

You are right on my method, I played through a few hundred random examples and the deviations from perfect startegy were rare and minimal. (And couldn't be prevented without making the strategy much more complicated.) Still, it would be interesting to know the exact numbers.

Quote: Canyonero

Nut holecard: You are right, it means the highest unpaired card, like a Qx on AK724 board. However, I did some more testing today, and raising the nut holecard actually is the wrong play in more situations than it is right, so this is now a check. Will edit original post...

Yeah, that was the one that surprised me the most, but it's correct to raise on a paired board while it's a check on an unpaired board (Stephen How confirms this in his strategy). However, leaving this out completely is not a big deal since your strategy makes you correctly raise all Ax 4x, and most Kx as well. The others sounded generally correct. I would be definitely interested in knowing the error cost, but that requires someone that has a good simulation setup for this game, which I definitely do not have. I'm pretty sure it would simulate relatively well. Possibly better than the strategy JB posted on the WOO site (3.488% of an ante).

Quote: tringlomane

However, leaving this out completely is not a big deal since your strategy makes you correctly raise all Ax 4x, and most Kx as well.

Exactly, there are very few situations left where this case even matters. This is what bloats some of the other strategies, they put a lot of effort into dealing with situations that never arise I you follow the strategy right from the start.

Compared to other games, UTH strategy isn't that difficult to remember (and I'm old with a crappy memory!). One way I made it fairly simple was to play a lot of free games and identify the situations that required a decision. Most of them, in my experience, occurred at the 1x point with rainbow boards, kicker requirements, and so on. There weren't that many of them, so I just made a short list which I carried with me and eventually remembered.