ONLINE Live Dealer Casino Hold’em

When you are playing live Casino Hold’em you have the benefit of interacting with other players, as well as with a dealer. You completely avoid computer simulated outcomes of hands, because here the deck of cards is as real as the dealer is.

Live dealer Casino Hold’em is played with a single deck which is then replaced with a shuffled one for each game. This makes the game a bit slower than usual, but that is the entire point, to offer a touch of reality, and not just headless fast paced game play.

How to Get Access to a Live Casino Hold’em Game?

As mentioned earlier in our Quick Tips section above, for now only two software providers offer a live dealer Casino Hold’em game, so basically you are left to choose between online casinos powered by these two providers. Naturally, Playtech should be your first choice, because this company has a long standing record of excellent games behind it. Since we have established where to look, now you will need to determine which casino that offers live Casino Hold’em is worth your money and time. This can be an easy task if you browse through our reviews made for the casinos that we recommend.

Accessing the game is simple enough. The standard procedure is to download the casinos software and install it. Once you have done that, you will have the entire casino including all services in just one program that doesn’t take much space. In the program you will need to look for the live dealer games category and to launch the live Casino Hold’em game offered by the casino.

If there is more than one table presented for the game, you will need to first choose the table, after which you will be logged into the stream and the game. Click on a vacant seat at the table and the dealer will count you in once you have made the ante bet. Without it you won’t receive any cards.

Live Casino Hold’em Payouts

Payouts in live Casino Hold’em vary according to the ranking of hands. The ranking of hands is the same as in a standard online Casino Hold’em game, and your Ante bet is paid out according to the paytable posted for that particular poker hand. These payouts can be influenced and thus increased if you have made a successful AA side bet.

The payouts for normal bets are the following: a straight or lower hand is paid 1 to 1, a flush hand is paid 2 to 1, a full house hand is paid 3 to 1, a four-of-a-kind hand is paid 10 to 1, a straight flush hand is paid 20 to 1, and the highest ranking hand, royal flush, is paid 100 to 1 or less. These are in general the standard payouts, but they may vary from casino to casino in view of the royal flush hand.

When you have won the side bet, a straight or lower is paid 7 to 1, a flush is paid 20 to 1, a full house is paid 30 to 1, a four-of-a-kind is paid 40 to 1, a straight flush is paid 50 to 1, and a royal flush is paid 100 to 1.

Live Casino Hold’em Table Limits

Casino Hold’em hasn’t been associated with high table limits, thus the maximum bets that you can make will range between $50 and $1,000 per hand. The minimum bet amounts go as low as $0.50, and maybe lower than that.

House Edge

Besides being a low risk poker game, Live Casino Hold’em is a game with a low house edge to. Without the side bet, the house edge is 2.16% and is calculated for the ante payout table. The highest the house edge gets is 2.4%.

Live Casino Hold’em Strategy

There is no precisely established strategy for playing Casino Hold’em. The general feeling is that if you have a good understanding of poker hands and playing poker, you can easily get to build your own strategy that can win you money. However, it is possible to devise an optimal playing strategy based on when to fold and when to call. With an optimal strategy you can lower the house edge below 1%.

Also, there are many Casino Hold’em calculators online where you can specify the card combination and the calculator will give you a tip on what to do. This is useful if you want to know what the correct move is at any given moment of the game.

Almost never fold when:

• you have a high Queen
• you have a gutshot draw to straight

Never fold when:

• you have a pair of any kind
• a high ace or high king of any kind
• any draw to flush or openhanded draw to straight

Fold very rarely when:

• you have a high Jack

Also: when the cards dealt on the table come with a pair, don’t fold if you have a high jack or better, but always fold if you have a high ten or lower.