River Hold Em

Has anyone done the math/ figured a strategy yet for this one:

http://www.playags.com/portfolio/river-holdem/

...besides "don't play it!" :)

JC

According to those rules, your Texas Hold-em hand can't win unless it is a Full House or Higher. My initial impression is that this is a very unattractive game.

You can still win the hand and collect on the play bets; they just don't pay the ante unless it's a full house or better.

They have it at Harrah's in Reno right now. I got clobbered without knowing basic strategy but it was fun to play.

JC

Anyone want to take a crack at this? I unfortunately do not have the math chops.

This is a very hard game to analyze, which is part of the reason that no one has yet responded. I have now spent many hours analyzing this game in an approximate fashion, and I am not yet finished, but I can provide you with some rough strategy rules and guidance.

River Holdem requires the player to make three decisions:

Preflop (you have 2 cards) : BET 1X or FOLD
Postflop (you have 2 cards and a 3 card flop) : BET 1X or FOLD
River (You see all 7 cards) : BET 2x or BET 1x or FOLD

PREFLOP: You should almost always BET 1X. I have not finished my analysis, but I recommend you fold only on these hands:

83o, 82o
74o, 73o, 72o
64o and lower

Suited: 72s, 62s, 52s, 42s, 32s

Two hands that I am very unsure whether to FOLD or BET 1x are 92o and 52s.

POSTFLOP:
I have only done enough analysis to give you a very rough guideline.

On the POSTFLOP, you should almost always BET 1X. Currently, I only recommend folding when all of these conditions are true:

- all 3 flop cards are higher than both your hole cards
- there are no pairs on the board or involving your hole cards
- there are no 4-card flush draws and no 3-card flush draws involving one or more of your hole cards
- there are no 4-card straight draws or open-ended 3-card straight draws involving one or more of your hole cards

If all of these conditions are met, then FOLD.

There are other conditions to fold POSTFLOP but I have not worked those out. But the basic concept is that, in order to fold postflop, your hand must be molten horse manure.

RIVER: On this bet, you know for certain what you hand is, but not what the dealer's 2 cards are. Conceptually, if you have a >50% chance of winning you should BET 2X and if you have less than a 14.3% (1/7) chance of winning, then FOLD.

Become familiar with the concept of outs (see the WOO strategy page on Ultimate Texas Hold-em, for example). An out is any single card (such as the Ace of clubs) that will give the dealer a better hand than yours if the dealer has it.

You should count the dealer's "outs" and then use this very approximate strategy for the RIVER bet:
22 or more outs - Fold
11-21 outs - BET 1X
0-10 outs - BET 2X

To make this strategy more accurate, I recommend also counting a 3 card flush on the board as 1.5 outs and an open-ended 3-card straight on the board as 1.5 outs (assuming a straight or a flush will beat your hand.) These are hands in which the dealer needs 2 cards to complete a flush or straight, but which still pose a sizable jeopardy.
****************************
That's it. This game has some nice bonuses for getting a Full House or Better because the bonus payout multipliers apply to all the bets except the ANTE (and the ANTE is paid off at 1:1). Defining the Ante as a unit bet, a Full House will pay 7 bet units, a 4oaK (Quads) will pay 17 bet units, a straight flush will pay 81 bet units and a royal flush pays 401 bet units. These bonuses help to tip the scales away from the FOLD option for the PREFLOP bet and sometimes even for the POSTFLOP bet.

Again, this is all rough strategy until someone does a more complete and rigorous analysis. I hope this helps.

So where are the installs?
What is the .ev?

Quote: gordonm888

RIVER: On this bet, you know for certain what you hand is, but not what the dealer's 2 cards are. Conceptually, if you have a >50% chance of winning you should BET 2X and if you have less than a 14.3% (1/7) chance of winning, then FOLD.

Become familiar with the concept of outs (see the WOO strategy page on Ultimate Texas Hold-em, for example). An out is any single card (such as the Ace of clubs) that will give the dealer a better hand than yours if the dealer has it.

You should count the dealer's "outs" and then use this very approximate strategy for the RIVER bet:
22 or more outs - Fold
11-21 outs - BET 1X
0-10 outs - BET 2X

Actually, we should change this to

28 or more outs - Fold
14-27 outs - BET 1X
0-13 outs - BET 2X

Quote: DeMango

So where are the installs?
What is the .ev?

I haven't done enough calculations to establish the EV.

This game is a lot like Ultimate Texas Holdem (and Mississippi Stud.) There are three player decision points and you need to first analyze what to do on the last decision for all possibilities, then back it up and analyze what to do on the second decision for all possibilities. Then, you analyze what to do on the first decision for all 169 starting hands. Then, you probably program a Monte Carlo simulation with all the decision rules and calculate EV.

That's a ton of work and most of us wait until a game is more established before we do that.

Thanks for taking a stab at this. Much appreciated!

As much as I find this game interesting, from a player perspective I think I prefer UTH; I don't like the trapped feeling I get with the series of ante bets and I like to be able to check pre-flop. However I'm going to try it out a bunch more next week.

JC

Played this a little more last week.

It's very volatile. First session it was all bonuses and I made out like a bandit; the dealer hit a royal flush and it was nice to get paid for that unlike UTH where I would just shake my head. Second session was all bad. No bonuses and mostly 10 5o etc. Lost much of the lead I made but I still came out ahead.

Whenever I got great cards I missed the opportunity to 4x it for sure. I wonder how it's doing.

JC

Anyone played/seen this elsewhere? Would love to get any more info.

Have had some KILLER sessions, and some not so good as with most carny games.

JC

I like this game, kind of. It's like THB but instead of being able to check it forces the player to make a bet every single call, probably because most players will fold more often when they shouldn't. Also, with no "blind" bet (like UTH) this is why they pay the ante even more rare than a "qualifying" hand. It's interesting to see the differences and how that more/less balances the math out.

To me the toughest best to analyze would be the flop bet. Say it's Q-J-2 and you have 10-5... I'd think for basic strategy it would come down to outs as gordon referenced. You should pretty much always see the flop cards, always bet when you have a pair, and 2x if you have mid pair or better on the board when you can. This is a rough off the top from poker and other similar games I've played. I'd like to do more analysis of this game and find places to play it =).

Played a couple of short sessions in Reno completely eschewing the bonus bets and flat betting $5. It's not bad, I think I prefer UTH, though.

WRT dealer trips, I pretty much hate betting on the dealer's hand in any game, but I can see it being attractive in this context because you get so many boards containing made hands.

Is this at Atlantis? I think they have tried a few AGS games...recall seeing Two Card Poker last summer.

Quote: gordonm888

According to those rules, your Texas Hold-em hand can't win unless it is a Full House or Higher. My initial impression is that this is a very unattractive game.

His Linked-in profile says Executive, game inventor, all-around bon vivant.
"When you create a game, the most important element is the ability, or maybe even the illusion, that a player can win money "

Anyone know where this game is in Vegas? Headed there for G2E.

JC