UTH vs Heads Up Holdem

One casino in WA has taken out Ultimate Texas Hold'em for Heads Up Hold'em, two tables. I have never played HUH. How is it compared to UTH? Are we going to see UTH fading away? Galaxy is taking over some territories.

I like HUH. It adds a pocket bonus and a bad beat bonus. As far as I can tell, it only takes away the 4x option to make of for it. I like the two added features.

I'm still deciding which one to bring in. The name recognition of UTH has some value to it.


ZCore13

I want to know what Paigowdan thinks about this

On a related subject, I was told at Biloxi, there are still Texas Holdem Bonus games. Over there, players are allowed to Raise 4x or 3x, not merely 2x. How would the HE change?

I like the bigger payout from a 4x bet when I get a big hand so I think I would rather play UTH.

Edit: I also see from looking at the strategy that I would be making the big raise with fewer hands, so fewer chances to get in my big bet with correct play. This is another negative from my standpoint. Thinking about my history with UTH, getting a bad beat payout would be extremely rare.

Also, on the WoO site the strategy for HUH doesn't mention pairs for the big raise. Is it the same as UTH: raise any pairs except deuces?

Not familiar with HUH. We just got UTH a few months ago - replacing 3x texas hold=em game. It's still trying to find a following. If HUH is all about the bonus bets, I probably won't play it. And I don't play trips in UTH.

Quote: UCivan

On a related subject, I was told at Biloxi, there are still Texas Holdem Bonus games. Over there, players are allowed to Raise 4x or 3x, not merely 2x. How would the HE change?

Using Mike's numbers and just adding/subtracting 2 to the payouts, I get a player edge of 0.9% under optimal play. That's a lower bound because it assumes the optimal strategy doesn't change given the higher raise figure, and it probably would. It may be the case that the player edge is 1.5% or something.

If there's a slightly suboptimal simplified strategy to be had, you could probably sit there with big bets and a 0.5% player edge without much effort. $100 ante play (and therefore $500-$700 action per round) would be worth $15-$20/hour with no heat until they realize they're spreading the game wrong. Not sure if that's worth it from a variance standpoint, but it's there.

Quote: ThatDonGuy

I want to know what Paigowdan thinks about this

I think it plays great

remarkable element of risk in this game. I'd try it in a heartbeat.

In my opinion, HUH is gaining share vs UTH due to lease pricing only. Scientific Games (SGMS) has a winner on its hands and has been aggressive about charging for it.........what else on the floor drops like UTH and holds in excess of 30% while players continue to flock back and play it again? Well done Pacman :-)!!!

The games are essentially the same with a reduction in the ability to make a 4X wager in exchange for a built in "Bad Beat Bonus". Don't get me wrong, I think this change will be attractive to some players, particularly those that don't play the game optimally anyway and rarely make the correct 4X raise.

SGMS is fighting back with their own Bad Beat Bonus and Ultimate Pairs side bets offerings. SGMS' Bad Beat Bonus does require an additional wager and HUH's is built in, but you do get the 4X raise in UTH if you want it, so........

Z correctly indicate that UTH has brand recognition that currently is way in excess of Heads Up Hold'em.....whether that translates into additional play going with the more recognized brand is going to be a property by property decision.

If I were running a locals casino floor and I had UTH on it already, I would be hesitant to change out the one table. I would however seriously consider adding HUH instead of a 2nd table of UTH to deal with a need for additional seats on busy nights. That would allow you to slowly introduce your players to HUH while still offering the more recognized branded Hold'em variant.

This strategy would also allow you to compare hold and play when both tables were open......maybe your players will tell you they like one vs. the other. Having the real estate to provide that luxury in decision would be nice to utilize, plus you know you are going to get a decent free trial period from Galaxy as they recognize the opportunity to get HUH on your floor. You likely aren't going to get much of a "free trial" from SGMS as you already know the game works on your floor, what is the incentive for them to give you a deal on table number 2?

On the Strip or a destination property, it would be tough to stray from the name recognition brand of UTH.......you are talking about a player group that is in town once or twice per year and are going to play what they know/recognize and that will be UTH in the hold'em genre.

I didn't vote above, because the option to play either one wasn't available. If both were offered and I was feeling more aggressive with my bankroll, I would go for UTH. If I had already had a rough trip with the bankroll and still wanted to play some hold'em variant, I would pick HUH for the smaller max bet requirement for optimal play & take the built in Bad Beat Bonus as an offset [arguing my trip had already been bad, I am sure to get bad beat the way my luck is running :-)].......other than that, I am indifferent as a player as I don't typically play Trips and wouldn't play Ultimate Pairs or Pocket Pairs, etc.

Quote: Paigowdan

Quote: ThatDonGuy

I want to know what Paigowdan thinks about this

I think it plays great

That settles it - I'm going back to the M to play HTH...just as soon as the bus system goes that far south.

UTH has had a Bad Beat Bonus for quite some time as a side bet. NYNY spread it back when they used to have the game on those card reader shuffle machines. The game was pulled a year or two ago from NYNY and I believe those shufflers were retired. It was the only place I ever saw the Bad Beat Bonus in UTH.

I played HUH at G2E 2013. It was fun. I still prefer UTH, which is my go-to game when I'm feeling aggressive (PGP is my laid-back game). Side by side, I'd probably have to look at the paytables and which sidebets were available; if all else was even, UTH by a slight edge. I do like the Trips bet, and that's a factor, better than either Bad Beat or 2 card hand sidebets.

Quote: Zcore13

I like HUH. It adds a pocket bonus and a bad beat bonus. As far as I can tell, it only takes away the 4x option to make of for it. I like the two added features.

Those are the key differences; 3x only instead of 4x, and they moved that money into the two other features. In practice, HUH has far less suboptimality than UTH. In other words, when you play wrong in UTH, it *really* hurts, but when you play wrong in HUH, it's not as bad. How nice are you to your players? :)

I recall doing this analysis when Galaxy came out with HUH and they were perplexed that it didn't hold like UTH. By dropping the 4x max raise to 3x, you take away the ability for the player to screw up badly on that first raise by only betting 3x instead of 4x. In UTH, you should *never* bet 3x. It's about a 10% game if you always raise 3x instead of 4x, whereas optimal is something like 2.2%. Galaxy figured (incorrectly) that just moving that money elsewhere would be okay, but they moved it into plays that had no strategy. In other words, the player always got that money instead of sometimes misplaying and losing it. The average HUH player therefore plays much closer to optimal than the average UTH player and that's why the average hold is higher on UTH. If everyone played near-optimal, the games would perform about the same.

Quote: MathExtremist

By dropping the 4x max raise to 3x, you take away the ability for the player to screw up badly on that first raise by only betting 3x instead of 4x.

My [limited] observations:

Betting 3x in UTH has to be a big money maker for the casino. It is very seductive; I saw guys routinely betting 5 times the minimum bet on all their bets including the Trips but in spite of being willing to bet like that, 3x on the initial bet all the time. And I would say the 3x bet was nearly universal with all the players I have seen except maybe when they had a smoking hand. Maybe.

Quote:

It's about a 10% game if you always raise 3x instead of 4x

Think of what they were doing to themselves! A lot of them were better poker players than me as far as being "street smart" [if it makes sense to use that expression in poker] as evidenced by how quick they would pick up on straight draw possibles etc.

Most, and I mean 95%, check pre-flop no matter what cards they hold unless they are super premium hands like aces, kings. And even those get checked sometimes.

Quote: Ibeatyouraces

Most, and I mean 95%, check pre-flop no matter what cards they hold unless they are super premium hands like aces, kings. And even those get checked sometimes.

And that's why the game holds so much. It's brutal to people who make mistakes.

I'm actually not in favor of such behavior in card games though I realize it's sometimes hard to limit. In blackjack, for example, it's possible to have about a 95% house edge just by always hitting until you bust. Nobody would ever do this, but it's technically possible. Quantifying suboptimality is something I've been looking at lately in my own games. I'm coming to market with a strategic tiles game that has a maximum suboptimality of about 10% house edge, optimal of about 0.9%, and mimic-the-dealer of 3.3%. I'm positioning it as "player-friendly" in that you can't really screw up too badly even if you have no idea what you're doing. In other words, it won't be too expensive to learn the game; I'm hoping that will lead to longevity rather than player burn-out. If a game overholds, it tends to have a short lifespan.

Is HuH available on the Vegas strip or downtown? I am in town atm and would love to try it....

It's brutal to those who play it right!! I played straight up not long ago with a friend on his money (I wouldn't play on mine) and lost $600 within an hour on a $10 game.

I think heads up Hold'em might be better for my location, which is 80 percent or more regulars and retired. I'm sure it will also be better for my budget. The only thing that I like about ultimate Texas Holdem is the name recognition. I will probably have a sign on the table that says something like compared to ultimate texas hold em or if you play ultimate Texas Holdem you will love this.

ZCore13

Quote: MathExtremist

And that's why the game holds so much. It's brutal to people who make mistakes.

I'm actually not in favor of such behavior in card games though I realize it's sometimes hard to limit. In blackjack, for example, it's possible to have about a 95% house edge just by always hitting until you bust. Nobody would ever do this, but it's technically possible. Quantifying suboptimality is something I've been looking at lately in my own games. I'm coming to market with a strategic tiles game that has a maximum suboptimality of about 10% house edge, optimal of about 0.9%, and mimic-the-dealer of 3.3%. I'm positioning it as "player-friendly" in that you can't really screw up too badly even if you have no idea what you're doing. In other words, it won't be too expensive to learn the game; I'm hoping that will lead to longevity rather than player burn-out. If a game overholds, it tends to have a short lifespan.

As a player, I like the fact that a casino can offer a game that offers decent play to a smart player because it takes a lot from dumb players. I am happy to have the dumb players subsidize the game. Obviously it can be taken too far if people get burned out on the game quickly.

This is the exact reason casinos can offer blackjack. Even with mediocre rules and CSM to prevent counting it takes less from optimal players than most carnival games.

Quote: Zcore13

I think heads up Hold'em might be better for my location, which is 80 percent or more regulars and retired. I'm sure it will also be better for my budget. The only thing that I like about ultimate Texas Holdem is the name recognition. I will probably have a sign on the table that says something like compared to ultimate texas hold em or if you play ultimate Texas Holdem you will love this.

I recommend running that by your legal department first; there are right and wrong ways to use competitive trademarks in advertising. You don't want to get it wrong and incur the wrath of SciGames' IP team.

Quote: MathExtremist

I recommend running that by your legal department first; there are right and wrong ways to use competitive trademarks in advertising. You don't want to get it wrong and incur the wrath of SciGames' IP team.

Yeah, probably something more like "Compare to the Ultimate Holdem game". A little dance around the trademark.

ZCore13

Quote: jml24

This is the exact reason casinos can offer blackjack. Even with mediocre rules and CSM to prevent counting it takes less from optimal players than most carnival games.

That's only part of the story with BJ. BJ can afford a low house edge because you get 3-4 times the action per hour than on a carnival game. A carnival game might get 30-45 rounds/hour, BJ might get 150. Even with an edge 1/3 the size, BJ can make as much per hour. But it "looks better" on a per-round basis. An operator might not be able to profitably operate a $5 0.6% game at 30 rounds per hour even if they could at 150 per hour. At that point it's more about win/hour/square foot relative to overhead (dealers, etc.), and not so much "hold %".

I never liked hold percentage anyway, it's too squishy a measurement for my liking. And too easily manipulated by, for example, a buy-in of $1000 and then not playing much before coloring up. Give me a strong win/hour relative to the table minimum and I probably don't care what the drop is. But now we're getting into operations philosophy...

Quote: MathExtremist

That's only part of the story with BJ. BJ can afford a low house edge because you get 3-4 times the action per hour than on a carnival game. A carnival game might get 30-45 rounds/hour, BJ might get 150. Even with an edge 1/3 the size, BJ can make as much per hour. But it "looks better" on a per-round basis. An operator might not be able to profitably operate a $5 0.6% game at 30 rounds per hour even if they could at 150 per hour. At that point it's more about win/hour/square foot relative to overhead (dealers, etc.), and not so much "hold %".

I never liked hold percentage anyway, it's too squishy a measurement for my liking. And too easily manipulated by, for example, a buy-in of $1000 and then not playing much before coloring up. Give me a strong win/hour relative to the table minimum and I probably don't care what the drop is. But now we're getting into operations philosophy...

Good observations, ME. Thanks.

Quote: Ibeatyouraces

It's brutal to those who play it right!! I played straight up not long ago with a friend on his money (I wouldn't play on mine) and lost $600 within an hour on a $10 game.

And if you had been playing uth instead would your results have been significantly different?

Quote: Zcore13

Yeah, probably something more like "Compare to the Ultimate Holdem game". A little dance around the trademark.

ZCore13

Your Deal Staff's first words out of their mouths when asked will be "It plays just like UTH with a lower maximum bet and a built in bad beat bonus.......your money will last longer at Heads Up Hold'em and your have just as much chance to hit the big 500-1 pay on the Blind bet!!", but I think HUH calls it the Odds bet or something like that.

You'll just have to weigh the risk of a player that decides not to play at your property and plays at a competing property with UTH over the distinction. That risk vs. your cost savings will make the decision for you. Then you just monitor the Hold to make sure it is 30%+ and away you go! My guess is that HUH will do just fine since they haven't had the option to play UTH at your place yet.

It is the replacement of UTH with HUH that would be a concern if I was an operator........replacing a game on the floor that has been holding 30%+ over the last 24 months with a nice drop, etc. and putting in a newbie version of the same game over a $600-$700 per month savings in lease rate, doesn't seem like the right move to make. If you lose $2,000+ of drop when a few of your regular players don't like the new version, there goes your cost savings.

Quote: Hunterhill

And if you had been playing uth instead would your results have been significantly different?

It was UTH. He wanted to play two hands and put me in the game for him.

Oh i misunderstood. Thought you meant HuH.

Element of risk:

Ultimate Texas Hold 'Em: 0.53%
Heads up Hold 'Em: 0.64%

Quote: Wizard

Element of risk:

Ultimate Texas Hold 'Em: 0.53%
Heads up Hold 'Em: 0.64%

Well that kind of kills the theory of a lower element of risk for Heads Up Hold'em.


ZCore13

For those that haven't played or seen Heads Up Holdem, you can play it on Galaxy Gaming's website HERE


ZCore13