1- Texas Holdem Fold Up. The new Texas holdem slot machine being offered by IGT is the Texas Holdem Fold up slot. It’s the company’s follow up to the Heads Up Holdem slot they released back in 2010. This slot plays 5 computers against the player to simulate a 6 person game of holdem at the table.
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When you hear Texas holdem the first thing most people think about is a group of players seated around a poker table playing poker.
But did you know that you can also play Texas holdem themed slot machines?
Here’s a review of the top slots games based on the popular poker version, Texas holdem.
1- Texas Holdem Fold Up
The new Texas holdem slot machine being offered by IGT is the Texas Holdem Fold up slot. It’s the company’s follow up to the Heads Up Holdem slot they released back in 2010. This slot plays 5 computers against the player to simulate a 6 person game of holdem at the table. The game starts by allowing the player to choose the denomination, which includes quarters, fifty cents, and dollars.
Texas Holdem Fold Up rakes 25 percent which is determined by the betting denominations the player choses when starting the game. For quarter players the 25% rake will cap at $2.25 on a $9.00 pot. For a fifty cent player the rake caps at $4.50 on an $18.00 pot, and for those who choose to play the dollar bet you’ll see a rake cap at $9.00 on a $36.00 pot.
Texas Holdem Fold Up is played limit style with a little change from the normal rules. Instead of blinds, which could give the upper hand in this game, the player antes two units before cards are dealt. The dealer button moves one spot clockwise at the conclusion of each hand. If a player decides to cash out the button will not move. In order to play a single hand a player must have at the minimum of 50 credits on the machine. If the player doesn’t have 50 credits they won’t be dealt into the hand until they‘ve added more credits.
This game, like many other slots does have a bonus bet option. This option allows the player to place a bonus bet before the hand is dealt. The Fold Up bonus bet only pays out the highest winning hand. For example, if a player flops a full house but makes quads on the turn, the bonus bet only wins 100 credits. However there is a bug in the game that will reset the bet to five credits which is the default bet on the system. If a player wishes to change the bet they need to double check the machine and make sure it did not change it back.
The game starts with the action starting to the left of the button. Since this game doesn’t allow blinds there’s an option for the players to check. One unique thing about this machine is that even if no bet has been placed the fold button is still available for the players to use.
Along with this open folding option, players can check or bet even if a bot has not yet opened, called, or raised, when there is action pending. Before the flop each bet made is equal to two credits. One thing for players to watch out for with this game are the pre-flop limp and check rearises made by the bots. This seems to be a bug here as well that if the bots do this they usually have pocket aces or kings or at least one of each of those cards.
When the action starts after the flop the bots often get a little wild. It’s almost impossible to see where they’re going unless they give the tell during the pre-flop round. During the flop round a bet is equal to two credits just like before and during this round where you’ll generally see the fold button light up. Since it’s already available you may choose to use it now if you think your hand is not going to win.
The next round, commonly known as the turn round, isn’t as wild as the flop round. This is the round where you’ll start to see the bots fold. As the name implies, the bots in this game place their cards face up when they fold. This give the player a small advantage by allowing the player to see the cards and it may give them the push to follow the straight.
This can also lead to others folding when they see the match to their low pocket pair in the bots folded hand. The chance for the pot to reach its cap for the round during the turn is unlikely since in the turn the bet goes up from two credits to four.
Unlike the turn, the river round is completely unpredictable. This hand seems to have the bots making the most mistakes. During this hand they tend to make bets with very little in their hand so if you think that your hand is pretty decent try to stick it out during their crazy bets.
One thing about this game is that even if the player folds the game continues and you can see the bots very quickly raise the stakes. This seems to be a ploy to make the player feel like there was real action at these tables. In the end if the bots are the only players left it doesn’t matter who wins since they are being backed by an unlimited number of chips which gives the player a better view of why the loose action took place.
This game doesn’t seem to be one of the better slots to play while you’re in Vegas. Although for those who have a higher knowledge of the game they may see bigger payouts once they’ve played a few times to determine how the game runs.
It seems to be trying to draw in players who are inexperienced with the notion that the computers they’re playing against are bad players when they seem to be just trying to build up the pot for the rake. We wouldn’t put this game as one of the slots to search for while in Vegas unless you’re in the mood to try and beat a machine at its own game.
Though it looks like a Texas holdem game, in the en it’s simply a variation of a slot machine where you can’t win in the long run.
2- Texas Holdem Heads Up Poker
This game, like many others on the market, is manufactured and distributed by IGT. It has been available in casinos such as the Bellagio and Red Rock in Vegas since coming onto the market in 2010.
This game is pretty easy as it has buttons that are much like those found in video poker. The buttons for check, call, fold, and bet / raise are easy to use and leave little chance of placing an unintentional bet. This game also offers a bonus bet which allows you to make a bet on the value of the flop, turn, or river. Most people don’t see the benefit here and choose not to play this bet.
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One thing a player needs to be aware of with the bonus bet feature is that it’s not something that can just be turned on or off. If the previous player has the bonus activated then it must be toggled all the way through to be inactivated by the next player unless they chose to participate in the game. If they have chosen to keep the bonus bet option available then they need to make sure that the amount they are wagering is set and is being deducted while playing.
This game offers limits of fifty cents to a dollar with blinds at a quarter to fifty cents, a dollar and two dollar limits with fifty cent to dollar blinds, and two dollar to four dollar limits with blinds being one and two dollars. As it is in normal heads up poker, the small blind is on the button, and begins the pre flop betting action, and the big blind acts first on all other betting rounds. When the game starts the computer gets the first button.
Pre flop play seems to be a little hyper with this game. The computer will almost always raise in the small blind even when it has week hands so the player should not get too discouraged as they may still have a good chance if they’re willing to take the risk.
On the other side the computer has also been known to fold during the pre-flop in the small blind if raised in the big blind but this doesn’t happen very often. The game does tend to fold more in the small blind than in the big bind when facing a raise regardless of if the pot odds are the same. This is because raising from the big blind closes out the round just like in a normal game.
The play by the computer doesn’t really change much when going into the flop round but does seem to settle a little. The machine has been known to raise here even with really bad hands so again a player must either know how to play or be very confident in the hand they’re holding to not let the computer outwit them. Even though the computer is more likely to fold here than in the pre flop phase it’s still not a very high chance as it seems that it’s set up to continue on even with a very bad hand.
The turn round is where the computer gets into the game and the game play tightens up. In this round it’s less likely for the computer to raise if it has a weak hand so this is when the player can really see where the game is going. If the computer doesn’t raise there’s a good chance that the cards it’s holding are not good. The player should also keep in mind that deciding to go all out here is not a good idea. Just like in a good heads up game a player could get sucked in at this point.
The river round sees more action from the computer that will usually call if it has an ace high or a king high. At times it has been known to even call with a not so great hand as well. Those players who immediately go into check and call mode in reaction to this strategy are probably not used to playing a lot of heads-up poker. They think by doing this it will trap the computer and this is just not the case in most instances.
Instead, a better way to play is to play hyper lag in the beginning rounds. In this game you have to play very loose to survive and don’t hold out to fold in the end rounds because this can you get you crushed with this slot.
This game, unlike most of the others, has the ability to adjust its expectations of what is still out there based on the composition of the board. This machine seems to play top pair / top kicker more slowly on a board with flushes and straights possible.
The machine also bluffs, check raises, and will do the occasional check raise bluff just like players will in a real life poker game. It also seems to be able to determine the likelihood of the players hand based on a range of the previous street action. Another nuance of the machine is that it seems more likely to go for a check raise if its opponent put in the last bet on the previous street.
3- Texas Holdem Video Slot
This new video poker slot machine adds to the experience by allowing the players to play with the best of the best of the poker world. Personalities such as Johnny Chan and Phil Hellmuth have lent their likeness to these games which draws many more people to play. Getting the chance to put your skills to the test against these two is the dream of many in the poker world.
This game is played much like a real game of holdem. Any two cards can win in this version of the game. Player’s place an ante bet and are also able to place a bonus jackpot bet before the first hand is dealt. Throughout the game if a bet is to be placed it must be done before the cards are seen in each round. So the ante must be placed before the first cards are dealt and bets during the flop, turn, or river rounds must be placed before the cards are displayed.
Once the ante bets and bonus bets are completed the first two cards are dealt face down which allows each player to get a peek of their cards. Once they’ve seen their cards they can now place their flop bet or fold if they so choose. Once all bets have been placed the three community cards are dealt face up into the middle of the screen. Once these cards have been dealt the players have the option to place a bet or to check and wait for the next card.
Once everyone has made their decisions the turn card is dealt on the screen face up. Just like the round before the players must now decide whether to place another bet, fold, or check. The community card is dealt face up.
The river card is the end of the card options. Each player’s best five card hand is highlighted by the machine. This ends the game and whoever has the best hand wins. This also determines who wins the jackpot bonus.
For those looking to play a game of holdem that is pretty straightforward and easy to play this is the game for you. This game not only is easy to navigate but gives you the sense of playing against legends in the game.
Although you do need to know the ins and outs of the game we would say that a beginner would feel very comfortable playing this game. The action doesn’t seem to be to over the top and is less likely to scare away those players who are less experienced.
But in the end it’s still a slot machine disguised as a Texas holdem game.
Conclusion
These games all seem to be relatively similar in most aspects. They all look and act like Texas holdem games, but at the end of the day they’re simply slot machines. This is similar to how slot machines in some areas are actually working like bingo games behind the scene because of the local laws.
We don’t recommend playing Texas holdem themed slot machines if you’re a poker player, because you can improve your game to a profitable level at the tables. The same can’t be said for playing one of these machines.
Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.Last week an ex-Google friend of mine who also builds poker AIs directed me to a 2+2 thread about a new video poker machine from IGT that offers players 6-way fixed-limit hold’em against five bots. The bots play poorly, but the catch, of course, is really high rake — 25% up to 2.25 bets maximum, or 9 bets in the pot to reach max rake.
The game is called Texas Hold’em Fold Up, and it already has gotten a lot of attention.
In the 2+2 thread, John Mehaffey and Jimmy ”Gobbo” Fricke had a interesting discussion about the game, whether or not it’s beatable, and how it could be an effective way to earn Caesars’ Seven Star status in perhaps a less expensive sort of way than can be done via other casino games. Mehaffey wrote a good article about the game last week as well. Both the thread and Mehaffey’s article are worth checking out for anyone who wants details of the game as well as smart discussion about it.
Since there is still no Total Rewards in Brooklyn, I have not played the game as yet, but that’s not going to deter me from offering an opinion on this “6-max poker” game that stands as a clever take on the standard video poker machine. I know that many of my WSOP buddies enjoy a bit of video poker, so here is my attempt to answer some obvious questions that come to mind about Texas Hold’em Fold Up.
Is the game beatable?
Well, the casino certainly does not think so. We’ll get into the details of the five bots and 25% rake, but it’s worth noting that the game does give out casino loyalty points and is distributed by IGT which controls something like 95% of the video poker market and many of the patents. It’s safe to assume that IGT considers this primarily as yet another video poker game.
According to Mehaffey’s piece, Texas Hold’em Fold Up was created by Michael Baker, whose background is in life insurance and financial management — in other words, not in AI. These days to sell a casino game, a blackjack side-bet, or a slot machine concept to the casino industry, you’d need beforehand to demonstrate that the new game can’t be beaten, even by a very smart player. (If it did not exist already, I’m pretty sure that you could not get blackjack into a modern casino, except perhaps the ”blackjack pays 6-to-5” variety.)
But you’re pretty good at limit hold’em, you say. Can you gain an advantage with good play? Certainly.
As with table games and video poker, this game is designed so that the casino gets a minimum win from everybody, even from a very good player, and the casino has a chance to win even more when players make mistakes. According to the Wizard of Odds, you can play most video poker games within 0.5% of break even just by following a few rules, but most players don’t do that. The casino wins 1-2% more from actual video poker players than they would if those players played by the book.
Similarly, unless you’re playing with bad rules, following that pocket blackjack card at a Vegas table also gets you to within 0.5% of the house edge. Most players lose about 2% per bet instead, by making a few costly mistakes.
Going back to Texas Hold’em Fold Up, then, 25% rake is very high, and the casinos think you can’t beat it. I’m not tempted to say that they are wrong, and I doubt that you could beat that rake just with ”good poker.” But if we break down the structure of the game, perhaps there are some spots to exploit and others to avoid. We’ll take a look at that in just a bit.
Is Texas Hold’em Fold Up like the Heads-Up Hold’em machine?
Not really.
The “Texas Hold’em Heads-Up Poker” machines, which have been had a niche presence in Vegas casinos since 2010, are also distruted by IGT. But those machines were created by a small company called G2 Game Design in an office park off of S. Rainbow Boulevard in suburban Las Vegas. The company purchased a neural network-based AI for heads-up limit hold’em developed by a Norwegian scientist in the late 1990’s.
First came the AI, which Frederik Dahl (an engineer with a background in AI) developed for his own personal interests, then a businessman bought the rights and they turned it into a slot machine. They convinced IGT and some of their customers that the AI plays so well that it can hold any limit hold’em player to a draw and beat most of them substantially, without the need for rake of any kind.
There’s more interesting backstory here, but after some players did play pretty well against the Texas Hold’em Heads-Up Poker machines, the casinos kept them but removed the player points. The heads-up machine indeed plays very good poker, and it is very hard to beat. While there is no rake, you also get nothing back.
This new 6-max machine is different. From what Mehaffey and Fricke have reported, the five bots play bad poker, but the rake is set so high the casinos are still willing to give you some of that rake back, in casino rewards points.
So how does a player get maximum value playing Texas Hold’em Fold Up? Much of this is speculation on my part, but there are a few factors in your favor:
Poker Slot Machines
- not all bets have the same value (you pay no additional rake above a 9-bet pot)
- the bots play badly, and predictably (with some logic, which I attempt to guess below)
- by state law, the bot cannot adjust to your play (every hand is played independently)
- the button moves, so position matters
- the goals of the casino and the game developer may not be the same
With some of these factors in mind, let’s think a little further about the game design, and about who is designing the game.
Bots playing badly — it’s the whole point
In an interview with The New York Times, Gregg Giuffria, owner of the Texas Hold’em Heads-Up Poker machines rolled out before, talks about the problems with running an AI that is too good and therefore beats the players too quickly. More to the point, poker players are drawn to opponents that play badly rather than to those who play close to game theory optimal poker (a topic I’ve explored here before).
The new 6-max game seems to solve this by offering five terrible opponents, but raking so much that you still can’t win. You see the bots making terrible bets and call downs, so you play more. If you make a side-bet that pays out a bonus when you make premium hands (bets for which the house has a significant edge), so much the better.
How would you go about designing an AI for a bad poker bot, albeit one that will still win given a 25% cushion? That’s an interesting question to consider.
As I learned from building a deep learning heads-up poker AI, reading board texture is hard for computers, much harder even than for a mediocre human player. Beste online casino met free spins. It’s easy to calculate your odds for making a pair, for making a flush, and to approximate the odds of a one-pair hand winning on the river. But it’s much harder to know when your hand will have good implied odds, when your middle pair might be vulnerable, or when that same pair is pretty much the nuts given the way a hand has played out.
Exploiting these different spots when playing the new Texas Hold’em Fold Up game is your advantage, especially as the background of the game creator isn’t in math or computer science. I think it’s safe to assume that the bots play a rules-based, fixed strategy which is not sophisticated at all.
Mehaffey and Fricke’s examples of the bots calling down with king-high and seven-high on paired boards suggest that the bots may even not be reading the board texture at all, and instead are simply looking up the odds of winning with “a pair on the river,” even if the bot is playing the board. To be fair, the seven-high call involved a hand drawing to a straight and flush draw on the turn. It’s probably safe to assume that the bot will draw to any straight or flush, given some minimal pot odds.
I promise there will be specific suggestions — if you can’t wait, you can go ahead and scroll down below. First, though, I want to take a look at an example hand, just to see how devastating 25% rake can be.
Just like small-stakes hold’em?
A game with a high rake but with weak players who draw to the end and who never fold? Sounds a lot like actual limit hold’em games from back in the boom days. Or perhaps like small-stakes underground poker games, where players don’t come after work to fold, or to think too long about pot odds.
When I think about loose limit hold’em games, I think of the seminal book Small Stakes Hold’em by Ed Miller, David Sklansky, and Mason Malmuth. And when I think of that book, I think about playing a vulnerable top pair hand with multi-way action.
Suppose you hold on a flop. Your value against two random hands in such a situation is 61%, with the value of the other two being 19.5% apiece.
If you were to bet and both of your opponents called, with no rake your $1 bet is worth $0.83 in surplus value, since you always lose the $1 you bet, but you get $3 back 61% of the time .
Now if you’re paying 25% rake on that bet, it’s still costing you a dollar to bet, but you lose 25% of the whole $3 when you win. The value of your bet falls to $0.37 surplus value. That’s much more than a 25% cut in profits!
Let’s consider the same hand with 4-way action. Again, you are up against random opponents who are calling you blind, and you’ve got top pair with on a flop. In this case your hand has a value of 49%, with the other three random hands having a value of 17% each.
In the no-rake case, your surplus value here goes up to $0.96. (Of course it does, you want the extra caller.) In the 25% rake case, your value also goes up — to $0.47.
This example is against two or three completely random players. In reality, just eliminating some bad preflop hands from your opponents’ ranges means your bet loses almost all of its marginal value after the rake, even if you are still up against random hands and passive opponents.
I could not quite come up with a break-even scenario, but if you give one opponent , another , and the third one for middle pair, your surplus value goes down to just 17 cents, after 25% rake.
While the hand is getting raked, you are playing the ”penny auction” of poker. The competition is soft, but you’re paying a fee for every bid, whether you win or not. Thus does a great spot like top pair on the flop become a barely-profitable bet.
Meanwhile bluffing becomes especially expensive, since you’re paying a 25% tax when you win, while the bot gets full value to call you down. Calling a single bets, though, is still usually worth it. Getting 8-to-1 from the pot, compared to 6-to-1 after rake, is not really a major difference in most cases.
So what might be some good spots for the player?
I think it’s safe to assume that the bots are not explicitly colluding against you. I don’t know if that’s promised in the game details, but with a 25% rake cushion, the bots don’t need to collaborate to have an edge, and it’s really not that simple to code rules-based bots to team up on your hands, in any case.
That said, if two bots are raising each other until the street caps, this does put you in a tough spot with many a drawing hand, so it’s reasonable to think that the bots’ rules make sure that this happens often, without resorting to explicit collusion.
Mehaffey and Fricke mention the bots tend to cap once they bet and are raised. They do this both against the player and against each other. All of this suggests that the bot bets out with most of its good hands, and with some of its good draws, too. When it calls, it calls with weaker made hands, and weaker draws. It should actually be relatively easy to put the bot on a range of hands.
All of this means good spots for the player include:
- really strong hands (70%+ value), especially multi-way
- good draws (like big flush draws), since you will be called down
- the river, if you make it that far
- the button, as good hands will bet into you, and weak hands will check
While the pot is small, you pay a penalty to call, and a bigger one to bet. It’s better to get to a 70% winner cheaply, then make much more valuable bets. Even better would be making it past the 9-bet mark and stopping paying rake thereafter, then getting your flush paid off by middle pair.
I imagine that on the river, especially in position, it’s possible to get very good value, until and unless the bot’s algorithm is upgraded. Given that the bot cannot adjust to your play — and since the whole point of this poker game-slash-slot machine is to show you bad players you think you can beat — the river upgrade does not seem likely to happen anytime soon.
I’d either try to get great odds for a strong multi-way hand, or I’d try to see the river cheaply. Otherwise, you’ll probably want to fold a lot of marginal hands, or even good hands that just don’t make too many 70%+ boards. The bots can afford to look you up with middle pair, and they will. You can’t afford to call them off with similar hands in return.
The bots fold face up — does this help the player?
When the bots fold in the game, they fold face up (hence the “fold up” name). Does this provide an advantage to the player?
Not so much. It’s hard for the bot’s AI to adjust to board texture, and as mentioned before by state law it’s not allowed to adjust to your play. But it’s easy to account for the odds of making a straight or a flush based on cards folded face up. Use the information too, but this isn’t where the player’s edge comes.
You’re better off hoping that the bots hold on to their weak hands and longshot draws while their cards are still face down. Maybe they will make just enough of a hand to pay off on the river. Remember, the bots are tuned so that they defend against being taken off a hand, so bet good hands on the end that they will pay you off.
So we know casinos are not in the money-losing business. But could they have missed something? Possibly.
New casino games and slot machines are introduced in stages. Whoever creates a new game first sinks money into design and manufacturing, and also creates some math to show that a game cannot be beaten by a card-counting shark. Then, once a prototype is approved for testing, it gets introduced to sample casinos in Biloxi or wherever. There, the distributor gets a real idea for how popular the game might be, as well as how much it actually makes, against real players.
If the players don’t play, the game never makes it to Vegas. If the casino can’t beat the players, it also never makes it to Vegas. But if you put $2 million into a new game design, you really want to make sure that players voluntarily want to sit down and bet real money playing it. This is more important than anything else, especially to the game creator.
Given how much the 25% rake throws off the odds for even pretty straightforward spots like betting top pair in a loose 6-max limit game, it’s certainly possible that real players lost a tidy sum but also kept playing, given some of the terrible hands that the bots showed down. The adjustments you’d need to make to beat the game might be so unusual to a good limit hold’em player, that the test casino players of Texas Hold’em Fold Up never thought to try them.
Did I mention that there are no blinds? Instead, players post a small ante every hand. If position is as important as I suppose it could be, this is a good move by IGT to make it that much more painful to fold. And yet, it’s probably important to fold mediocre hands that make vulnerable top-pair, middle-pair type hands, while paying full rake.
Could you simulate this?
It wouldn’t be that hard to create players that compete independently, knowing that they need to beat a player who is paying 25% rake up to 2.25 bets. And in turn, to simulate a bot for the player’s side. But it’s not so simple that I could do it with my neural network AI in a few days.
I’d expect that the EV for the player’s hand is almost always negative, but often close to the value of posting an ante. Ante-only for this game really is a sharp piece of design. If I played, I think it would be too tempting to play too many hands, especially if you’re playing something like $2/$4 limit. Once you’re in, you get sucked into calling several bets, and not really in a position to bet anyone off. Not until you make a good hand, or make it to the river, could you get any real value from the bots.
I bet that a neural network simulation might be pretty good at figuring out what kinds of preflop hands lose the most, and which ones can get to those valuable late-game spots a little more often. Also, it would be nice to get an idea of how much position is worth.
How will the game change? Will it last?
Once a game hits the casino floor it never really goes away, but I don’t know if I see this one becoming too popular, as currently constituted. From what I’ve read, it sounds like the players lose every time. To make the game popular, you want the players to win sometimes, and that means decreasing the rake on the main game. Of course, lowering the rake means that the bots will have to play better, too.
That said, playing fast, small-stakes 6-max hold’em against opponents that fold face-up sounds like it could be a lot of fun. I can see this catching on, especially as part of a video poker mix, but not if the casino takes back 25% of every pot.
Also, if the rake goes down, some bluffs may become profitable, and it may not be necessary to nit it up as much as I suggest for this current version. You want players to have fun, and also to have a chance to win when they are having fun. If the fun style loses the most, this becomes a problem for the game’s longevity.
Heads Up Poker Books
How many people will really want to nit it up at $2/$4 against a computer? Even for those who are happy to pay some rake to kill time after a tourney, will they keep playing if they never book a winning session?
Will there be a no-limit hold’em version anytime soon?
I don’t think so. Betting with a slider is just too complicated for a casino game, where you expect to play a hand every 45 seconds. I can see something with a “pot” or “max-bet” button, but the casino doesn’t want you to lose (or win) everything in one hand. They want you to make a lot of small bets, take a percentage of each bet, and occasionally to let you hit a longshot for a big payoff so that you win and come back.
Final thoughts
Game design sounds in theory like it might be fun, but it’s actually pretty tedious. You have to please several different parties at once, and if either the players, the casino, or the game distributor is not satisfied, your game will never make it to the casino floor. There aren’t too many people who design games successfully, and if any of them are reading this, please let me know what I got wrong here.
Texas Hold’em Fold Up sounds like a fun game, and hopefully it will still be Vegas next summer for me to take a shot playing it during next year’s WSOP. Until then, those of you who do get a chance try it out, let me know what you think.
Illustrations: IGT
Nikolai Yakovenko is a professional poker player and software developer residing in Brooklyn, New York who helped create the ABC Open-Face Chinese Poker iPhone App.
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