Video poker is a casino game based on five-card drawpoker. It is played on a computerized console similar in size to a slot machine.
Here I'm playing multi hand video poker. Jack's or better, $0.50 units, at the Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas. I had four cards to a royal flush, and I managed to. Video Poker Hand Rankings Below you will find the different combinations and hand rankings for video poker games. The examples below are all found on Jacks or Better. Other games have different wins for example double bonus offers bigger pays for certain four of a kinds and deuces wild has wins for a wild royal and four deuces.
A flush is the fifth best hand in video poker. A flush is five non-sequential cards of the same suit. For example, 5-6-9-10-A of hearts is a flush. However, 5-6-7-8-9 of hearts is not a flush but a straight flush.
History[edit]
Video poker first became commercially viable when it became economical to combine a television-like monitor with a solid statecentral processing unit. The earliest models appeared at the same time as the first personal computers were produced, in the mid-1970s, although they were primitive by today's standards.
Video poker became more firmly established when SIRCOMA, which stood for Si Redd's Coin Machines (and which evolved over time to become International Game Technology), introduced Draw Poker in 1979. Throughout the 1980s video poker became increasingly popular in casinos, as people found the devices less intimidating than playing table games. Today video poker enjoys a prominent place on the gaming floors of many casinos. The game is especially popular with Las Vegas locals, who tend to patronize locals casinos off the Las Vegas Strip. These local casinos often offer lower denomination machines or better odds.
A few people that are skilled in calculating odds have made money playing video poker.[1]
The game[edit]
After inserting money (or a bar-coded paper ticket with credit) into the machine, play begins by placing a bet of one or more credits and pressing the 'deal' button. The player is then given 5 cards (like five-card draw) and has the opportunity to discard one or more of them in exchange for new ones drawn from the same virtual deck. After the draw, the machine pays out if the hand or hands played match one of the winning combinations, which are posted in the pay table. Unlike the table version, the player may discard all 5 of their original cards if they so choose.[2]
Pay tables allocate the payouts for hands and are based on how rare they are, the game variation, and the decision of the game operator. A typical pay table starts with a minimum hand of a pair of jacks, which pays even money. All the other hand combinations in video poker are the same as in table poker, including such hands as two pair, three of a kind, straight (a sequence of 5 cards of consecutive value), flush (any 5 cards of the same suit), full house (a pair and a three of a kind), four of a kind (four cards of the same value), straight flush (5 consecutive cards of the same suit) and royal flush (a Ten, a Jack, a Queen, a King and an Ace of the same suit).[3]
Some machines offer progressive jackpots or other unique bonuses, spurring players to both play more coins and to play more frequently.
Regulation[edit]
Video poker machines in casinos in the United States are regulated by state or Indian gaming agencies. These agencies typically require that the machines deal random card sequences using a virtual deck of cards. This is based on a Nevada Gaming Commission regulation later adopted by other states with a gaming authority. Video poker machines are tested to ensure compliance with this requirement before they are offered to the public.
Variations[edit]
There are many variations of video poker. They include Deuces Wild, where a two serves as a wild card; Joker's Wild, where a joker serves as a wild card; Anything's Wild, where the player selects any card (by rank) to act as the wild card before the hand is dealt; pay schedule modification, where four aces with a four or smaller kicker pays an enhanced amount (these games usually have some adjective in the title such as 'bonus', 'double', or 'triple'); and multi-play poker, where the player starts with a base hand, and each additional played hand draws from a different set of cards with the base hand. (Multi-play games are offered in 'Triple Play', 'Five Play', 'Ten Play', 'Fifty Play' and 'One Hundred Play' versions.)
In games which do not have a wild card, a player on average will receive the rare four-of-a-kind hand approximately once every 500 hands, while a player may play tens of thousands of hands before a royal flush, which usually has the highest payout.
Video poker games online are now available in the US in 3 different states: New Jersey, Delaware, and Nevada. Players in all three states are able to enjoy fully regulated online video poker games provided that they are physically present in the respective state, of legal age to gamble, and can validate their identity.
Full pay games[edit]
When modern video poker games first appeared, the highest-paying common variant of a particular game was called 'full-pay'. Game variants that returned a lower payback percentage were termed 'Short-Pay'. Though the term full-pay is still in use, today, there are many game variants that return more. Payback percentage expresses the long-term expected value of the player's wager as a percentage if the game is played perfectly. A payback percentage of 99 percent, for example, indicates that for each $100 wagered, in the long run, the player would expect to lose $1 if they played every hand in the optimal way. Full-pay Jacks or Better, for example, offers a payback percentage of 99.54%. Some payback percentages on full-pay games are often close to or even in excess of 100 percent.
Casinos do not usually advertise payback percentages, leaving it up to the player to identify which video poker machines offer the best schedules.
The payoff schedules for most video poker machines are configured with a pay schedule that pays proportionally more for certain hands (such as a royal flush) when the maximum number of credits (typically 5 coins) is bet. Therefore, players who do not play with the maximum number of credits at a time are playing with a smaller theoretical return.
Jacks or Better[edit]
'Jacks or Better,' sometimes simply called 'Draw Poker,' is the most common variation of video poker. Payoffs begin at a pair of jacks. Full pay Jacks or Better is also known as 9/6 Jacks or Better since the payoff for a full house is 9 times the bet, and the payoff for a flush is 6 times the bet.[4] Sometimes, 10/6 and 9/7 versions of Jacks or Better can be found as promotions.[5]
| Hand | Prize | Combinations | Probability | Return |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Royal Flush | 800 | 41,126,022 | 0.000025 | 1.9807% |
| Straight Flush | 50 | 181,573,608 | 0.000109 | 0.5465% |
| Four of a kind | 25 | 3,924,430,647 | 0.002363 | 5.9064% |
| Full House | 9 | 19,122,956,883 | 0.011512 | 10.3610% |
| Flush | 6 | 18,296,232,180 | 0.011015 | 6.6087% |
| Straight | 4 | 18,653,130,482 | 0.011229 | 4.4918% |
| Three of a kind | 3 | 123,666,922,527 | 0.074449 | 22.3346% |
| Two Pair | 2 | 214,745,513,679 | 0.129279 | 25.8558% |
| Jacks or Better | 1 | 356,447,740,914 | 0.214585 | 21.4585% |
| All Other | 0 | 906,022,916,158 | 0.545435 | 0.0000% |
| Totals | - | 1,661,102,543,100 | 1.000000 | 99.5439% |
Bally's All American[edit]
Bally TechnologiesAll American video poker is based on Jacks or Better with an increased payout for flushes, straights and straight flushes, but reduced payout for full houses and two pairs (8-8-8-3-1 versus 9-6-4-3-2). The full pay version (quads return 50 bets), once common but now rare, is one of the highest return versions of video poker offered, but the play strategy is very complex and mastered by few. IGT's version of the game is called USA Poker.
Tens or Better[edit]
'Tens or Better' is a variation of 6/5 Jacks or Better. The minimum paying hand is a pair of tens, rather than a pair of Jacks. Strategy is similar between the two games, in spite of the very different full house and flush payouts.
Joker's Wild[edit]
'Joker's Wild', as the name implies, adds a joker to the mix. The joker is fully wild and substitutes to make stronger hands. The inclusion of the wild joker also adds another winning hand in 5-of-a-kind. The game's name inspired a game show of the same name. The full pay version of Joker Two Pair or better (6-7-8), once common but now rare, is one of the highest return versions of video poker offered, but the play strategy is very complex and mastered by few.
Deuces Wild[edit]
'Deuces Wild' is a variation of video poker in which all twos are wild. (Wild cards substitute for any other card in the deck in order to make a better poker hand). In Deuces Wild, the payout for a four of a kind makes up approximately ⅓ of the payback percentage of the game, and a four of a kind occurs on average approximately every fifteen hands. Deuces Wild can be found with pay schedules that offer a theoretical return as high as 100.8 percent, when played with perfect strategy. This full-pay version is found only in Nevada. It is also available with other pay schedules that have lesser theoretical returns:
| Hand | 1 credit | 2 credits | 3 credits | 4 credits | 5 credits |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Natural Royal Flush | 300 | 600 | 900 | 1200 | 4000 |
| Four Deuces | 200 | 400 | 600 | 800 | 1000 |
| Wild Royal Flush | 25 | 50 | 75 | 100 | 125 |
| Five of a Kind | 15 | 30 | 45 | 60 | 75 |
| Straight Flush | 9 | 18 | 27 | 36 | 45 |
| Four of a Kind | 5 | 10 | 15 | 20 | 25 |
| Full House | 3 | 6 | 9 | 12 | 15 |
| Flush | 2 | 4 | 6 | 8 | 10 |
| Straight | 2 | 4 | 6 | 8 | 10 |
| Three of a Kind | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
| Theoretical Return | 99.7% | 99.7% | 99.7% | 99.7% | 100.8% |
Variations are available that pay different amounts for the quad 'deuces', such as Double Deuces (2000), Loose Deuces (2500), Triple Deuces (3000), and Royal Deuces (4000). Full pay Loose Deuces (25-17-10), once common but now rare, is one of the highest return versions of video poker offered.
Sigma Flush Attack[edit]
Sigma Flush Attack is a combination of video poker and a banking slot, in this case what is being banked is flushes.[6] After 3,4, or 5 flushes (varies by machine), the machine switches into 'flush attack mode' in which the next flush pays 100 or 125 credits instead of the more usual 30 credits of 9-6 Jacks or Better. Some of these machines are linked, which means players can simply wait for someone else to put the bank in flush attack mode, or alternately with non-linked machines a player can play after observing a previous player hit flushes but not enough to trigger the flush attack, a practice called 'vulturing'. Playing the pokies. The higher payoff of the flush attack represents one of the higher overlays of video poker. These machines, once common, are now relatively rare.
Bonus Poker[edit]
'Bonus Poker' is a video poker game based on Jacks or Better, but Bonus Poker offers a higher payout percentage for four of a kind. The full-pay version of this game returns 99.2%. (3)The game has multiple versions featuring different bonus payouts based on the ranking of the four of a kind.
Double Bonus[edit]
'Double Bonus' video poker is a variation of Jacks or Better with a bonus payout for four aces. This variation offers up to a theoretical return of 100.2 percent, when played with perfect strategy — however, this % is only on a '10/7' version video poker game (10/7 being the payouts for a full house and a flush). There are many other video poker varieties of 10/6, 9/6, etc. that have slightly lower than the most generous 10/7 version payout. Although the full-pay version has a theoretically-positive return, few play well enough to capitalize on it. Double Bonus is a complex game.(4)
It is also available with other pay schedules that have lesser theoretical returns:
| Hand | 1 credit | 2 credits | 3 credits | 4 credits | 5 credits |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Royal Flush | 250 | 500 | 750 | 1000 | 4000 |
| Straight Flush | 50 | 100 | 150 | 200 | 250 |
| Four Aces | 160 | 320 | 480 | 640 | 800 |
| Four 2, 3, or 4 | 80 | 160 | 240 | 320 | 400 |
| Four 5-K | 50 | 100 | 150 | 200 | 250 |
| Full House | 10 | 20 | 30 | 40 | 50 |
| Flush | 7 | 14 | 21 | 28 | 35 |
| Straight | 5 | 10 | 15 | 20 | 25 |
| Three of a Kind | 3 | 6 | 9 | 12 | 15 |
| Two Pair | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
| Jacks or Better | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
| Theoretical Return | 99.1% | 99.1% | 99.1% | 99.1% | 100.2% |
Double Double Bonus[edit]
'Double Double Bonus' video poker is a variation of Jacks or Better which offers bonus payoffs for different four of a kinds, as seen in the payout table below. Full pay Double Double Bonus can be found with pay schedules that offer up to a theoretical return of 100.1 percent, when played with perfect strategy. It is also available with other pay schedules that have lesser theoretical returns:
| Hand | 1 credit | 2 credits | 3 credits | 4 credits | 5 credits |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Royal Flush | 250 | 500 | 750 | 1000 | 4000 |
| Straight Flush | 50 | 100 | 150 | 200 | 250 |
| Four Aces w/2, 3, or 4 | 400 | 800 | 1200 | 1600 | 2000 |
| Four 2, 3, or 4 w/A-4 | 160 | 320 | 480 | 640 | 800 |
| Four Aces | 160 | 320 | 480 | 640 | 800 |
| Four 2, 3, or 4 | 80 | 160 | 240 | 320 | 400 |
| Four 5-K | 50 | 100 | 150 | 200 | 250 |
| Full House | 10 | 20 | 30 | 40 | 50 |
| Flush | 6 | 12 | 18 | 24 | 30 |
| Straight | 4 | 8 | 12 | 16 | 20 |
| Three of a Kind | 3 | 6 | 9 | 12 | 15 |
| Two Pair | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
| Jacks or Better | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
| Theoretical Return | 98.9% | 98.9% | 98.9% | 98.9% | 100.1% |
Low pay video poker games[edit]
Often casinos choose to use pay tables which reduce the maximum payout percentage as compared to other commonly available game variants. This increases the house edge, but generally reduces net revenue for the casino as players experience less 'play time' on the machine, busting out of their buy-in at an earlier point. Casinos that reduce paytables generally have to increase promotions to compensate and attract customers.
9/5 Jacks or Better[edit]
9/5 Jacks or Better is a low pay version of the game. The payout for making a Flush is cut from 6x your bet to 5x your bet, but all other payouts remain the same. This reduces the maximum payout percentage to 98.45% for players betting five coins per hand to receive the Royal Flush bonus.
8/6 Jacks or Better[edit]
8/6 Jacks or Better is another often used pay table for Jacks or Better games. The payout for making a Full House is cut from 9x your bet to 8x your bet, while all other payouts remain the same as in a full pay game. This reduces the maximum payout percentage to 98.39% for players betting five coins per hand to receive the Royal Flush bonus.
8/5 Jacks or Better[edit]
8/5 Jacks or Better cuts the Full House payout from 9x your bet to 8x your bet, and also cuts the Flush payout from 6x your bet to 5x your bet. All other payouts remain the same as in a full pay game. This reduces the maximum payout percentage to 97.30% for players betting five coins per hand to receive the Royal Flush bonus. A common promotion used by casinos to encourage play on this tight paytable was to add a 2% progressive meter to the royal flush.
7/5 Jacks or Better[edit]
7/5 Jacks or Better cuts the Full House payout from 9x your bet to 7x your bet, and also cuts the Flush payout from 6x your bet to 5x your bet. All other payouts remain the same as in a full pay game. This reduces the maximum payout percentage to 96.15% for players betting five coins per hand to receive the Royal Flush bonus.
6/5 Jacks or Better[edit]
6/5 Jacks or Better cuts the Full House payout from 9x your bet to 6x your bet, and also cuts the Flush payout from 6x your bet to 5x your bet. All other payouts remain the same as in a full pay game. This reduces the maximum payout percentage to 95.00% for players betting five coins per hand to receive the Royal Flush bonus.
Progressive jackpot games[edit]
Other kinds of video poker only have positive theoretical returns when the progressive jackpot is high enough. Many establishments advertise with a billboard when the progressive jackpot is high enough. Otherwise sub-optimal games like 8/5 jacks or better can become positive expectation when the jackpot is large enough.
Terminology[edit]
As with regular poker, there are many different terms and phrases that are associated with playing video poker. Not knowing these terms may cause a disadvantage to anyone playing the game. The most important video poker terms [7] have been added to the table below.
| Video Poker Term | Explanation |
|---|---|
| Full Pay | The highest paying variant of a video poker game. Typically with high return-to-player game percentages. |
| Low Pay | Refers to video poker games which increase the house edge and reduce the return-to-player percentage. |
| Natural Royal Flush | A unique case when the highest possible hand, a Royal Flush, is dealt to the player. |
| Power Poker | Theoretically the most profitable poker strategy. |
| Multi-Play | A feature that allows participants to play with more than one hand. |
| Hold | When a player chooses to keep the cards in their hand. |
| Auto Hold | A feature available in certain video poker games. If turned on, the game automatically chooses which cards to hold. |
| Not So Ugly Ducks (NSUD) | A game most well-known for paying 16 for a 5 of a kind and 10 for a straight flush. |
| Game Denomination | Refers to the value of the cards or the coin size in a video poker game. |
| Flush | A five-card hand that contains cards of the same suit. |
| Discard | The cards you decide to throw away after the initial deal. |
| Draw | The second deal of the cards, after you have decided which cards to hold and which to discard. |
| Hand | The five cards (or less) dealt on the screen are known as a hand. |
See also[edit]
References[edit]
- ^Montero, David; Winton, Richard; Vives, Ruben (2017-10-09). 'In the solitary world of video poker, Stephen Paddock knew how to win. Until he didn't'. Los Angeles Times. ISSN0458-3035. Retrieved 2017-10-11.
- ^'Video Poker Rules & Gameplay'.
- ^'Learn Video Poker Rules and Video Poker Hand Values'. OnlineCasinosDoc.com. Retrieved 2010-08-05.
- ^'Video Poker Analyzer - Wizard of Odds'. wizardofodds.com.
- ^Video Poker Optimum Play, Dan Paymar, Table 9: Attractiveness Quotient of Selected Games, page 175, ISBN1-886070-11-3
- ^Robbing the One-Armed Bandits, Charles Lund, 1999, ISBN091057510X, page 37ff
- ^'Video Poker Online Guide'. online-gambling.com. Retrieved 2019-09-17.
External links[edit]
| Wikimedia Commons has media related to Video poker. |
- Video Poker Guides at Curlie
This video poker strategy page and the accompanying section have a single goal—to help you get the best odds when gambling at a casino. Video poker, unlike many casino games, offers you at least some degree of control over the odds. Games like roulette and slot machines have no strategy. The decisions you make are essentially meaningless.
Video poker, on the other hand, resembles blackjack. You can use strategic thinking to improve your chances of winning and decrease the house edge. This shouldn't be too much of a surprise, as both games use a deck of cards to play. Of course, in the case of blackjack, you're usually looking at a real deck of cards. In video poker, you're using a virtual deck that's actually being simulated using a random number generator.
But legitimate video poker games duplicate the odds you'd see if you were using a real deck of cards.
And that's why you can use a strategy to improve your odds. We talk more about that in the next section.
Why Does Video Poker Have a Strategy?
When you're playing a slot machine, you have no idea what the probability of a particular symbol coming up on a particular reel is. That probability is determined by the random number generator.
A random number generator is a computer program that constantly cycles through numbers at the rate of thousands of numbers per second. Each number corresponds to a different stop on the reel in a slot machine game. Or in the case of a video poker game, each number corresponds to a playing card.
But since you don't know anything about the probability of getting a particular symbol on a slot machine game, it's impossible to make any kind of strategic decision.
In fact, even if you DID know the probabilities of getting each symbol on the reel, you still wouldn't be able to make a decision that would affect your outcome.
There are no decisions to be made. You put your money in, your spin the reels, and you accept the outcome.
Several, if not most, casino games are like this. You have no way of affecting the odds no matter how smart you are. The odds of winning a single number bet in roulette are 37 to 1, no matter what kind of strategy you use.
That's why video poker (and blackjack) are different. You DO have the opportunity to make decisions which affect your outcome.
Understanding why requires looking into the math behind the game a little bit.
Expected Return, Payback Percentages & the House Edge
The expected return of a bet, video poker or otherwise, can be calculated if you know the probability of winning and losing. You also need to know how much you stand to win and how much you stand to lose.
You multiply the probability of winning by the amount you're going to win. You multiply the probability of losing by the amount you're going to lose. You add those two numbers together to get your overall expectation.
Suppose we set up a really simple gambling game where you're going to flip a coin. If you guess the correct outcome, you win 25 cents. But if you're wrong, you lose 50 cents.
In this example you have a 50% chance of winning and a 50% chance of losing. 50% of 25 cents is 12.5 cents, which is the first part of your equation. 50% of 50 cents is -25 cents. (It's negative because that's the amount you lose.)
Your expected loss on that bet is 12.5 cents.
You won't lose 12.5 cents every time. That would be impossible.
But if you tallied all your net wins and losses over time, and if you played for a long time, your results would eventually start to conform to the mathematical expectation.
Return is usually measured as a percentage. In this case, 12.5 cents is 50% of the original bet, so your expected return is -50%.
That's an awful bet. Most experienced gamblers wouldn't take it.
But it's an example of how the casino gets its edge in every game in the casino.
This same kind of math can be applied to video poker games and to slot machine games to determine a payback percentage. The payback percentage is just the amount of money you expect to win back from the casino for every $100 you wager over a long period of time.
Keep in mind that in the short run, anything can and often will happen. You can win a big jackpot early in your session, and your results won't look anything like the mathematically expected payback percentage.
But the longer you play, the closer your results will get to the mathematically predicted results. Over an infinite number of trials, you would certainly have results which mirror the mathematical prediction.
The house edge, on the other hand, is the amount of each bet that the house mathematically expects to keep. It's the opposite of the payback percentage.
Poker Hands Calculator
In the case of a full pay Jacks or Better game, the payback percentage is 99.54%. So the house edge is 0.46%.
That means for every $100 you bet, the casino expects you to win $99.54. They expect to win 46 cents. https://depositfinancial-batmanvssupermangamesfreedownload.peatix.com.
Those are long term expectations, though. In the short run, anything can happen.
All of that background is necessary for understanding why video poker strategy matters.
Since you know the odds of being dealt a particular hand, and you know the odds of improving a hand, you can compare your choices in a video poker game to go with the choice that has the better expected return.
You're playing Jacks or Better, and you have 4 cards to a royal flush, but you also have a pair. You could play this hand in a number of ways.
You have a number of options in this example:
- You could throw all 5 cards away and start over. That's obviously the play with the lowest expected value.
- You could throw away all the cards except the pair. In this case, you're hoping to improve your hand to 2 pairs, 3 of a kind, or a full house.
- Or you could throw away the card that makes the pair and try to draw the royal flush.
Since you have a pair, you have a 100% chance of winning at least 1 unit. That's an expected value of $1. But it's actually a little better than that, because you also have the chance to improve the hand. Let's just call it an expected value move of $1.50.
But a royal flush has a payout of 800 to 1. The odds of drawing the card you need for that hand are 1 in 47, but any time you get a 46 to 1 shot at an 800 to 1 payout, you should take it. The expected value of that play is huge.
You have a roughly 2% chance of winning $800. That's $16. You also have a roughly 98% chance of losing $1. That's -98 cents.
$16 – 98 cents = $15.02, which is a heck of a lot more than $1.50.
The correct choice is clear, even though you're going to lose this bet more often than not. On the occasions when you do win, your winnings are going to be so large that they'll make up for all the times you lost the bet and then some.
Not all situations in video poker are that clear. In fact, a human can't just sit there and work out the correct play in every situation using a pencil and paper.
Luckily, we have computers for that.
You can find a video poker strategy chart for just about any variation available. In fact, you can even find websites which will generate the perfect strategy for you based on the game and the pay table that you input.
Here's how such a strategy chart works:
- You get a list of hands.
- At the top of the list is the best possible hand.
- You work your way down the list until you find a hand that matches what you have.
- When you get to that hand, you stop and keep the cards that are listed.
Almost all video poker strategy charts start with a royal flush as the top listed hand. That makes sense. After all, you would never throw away the top paying hand in the game. That would just be silly.
In most games, 4 of a kind and a straight flush will also be at the top of the list—those are usually the top 3 hands with the best payouts.
But the next best hand after that?
You'll always hold on to 4 cards to a royal flush.
That's some strategy advice based on Jacks or Better, but the strategy for Deuces Wild is a little bit different.
For one thing, you'll always look at lists of potential hands based on how many deuces you have. One of the fundamental tenets of Deuces Wild strategy is that you never discard a 2.
Then based on how many deuces you have in your hand, you have a list of potential hands to choose from. Start at the top and work your way down.
Another way of thinking about video poker strategy is to think about potentially conflicting hands.
You have 3 cards to a royal flush, but you also have a pair. Do you keep the pair, or do you go for the royal flush?
In this case, you keep the pair. Your odds of hitting the royal flush go down exponentially when you need 2 cards to complete your hand.
Cook&039 n recipe organizer 12 14 6 ply. In probability, when you want to know the odds of event A happening AND event B happening at the same time, you multiple the probabilities by each other.
In the event of filling a royal flush, each card has a 1/47 chance of showing up. The odds of getting both cards are 1/47 X 1/47, which is about 1 in 2500. And 800 to 1 payout doesn't warrant that kind of risk, especially if you've got a sure winning in your hand already.
The strategy varies from game to game because the payouts vary from game to game. In Bonus Poker, which is basically just Jacks or Better with a bonus payout for a 4 of a kind, you might be more likely to draw to your 4 of a kind in certain instances.
In Deuces Wild, the presence of the wild card makes a huge difference to how you play your hands. You need much stronger hands to win, but those wild cards make it easier to get those hands. One of the fundamental tenets of Deuces Wild strategy is to never discard a deuce.
Often casinos choose to use pay tables which reduce the maximum payout percentage as compared to other commonly available game variants. This increases the house edge, but generally reduces net revenue for the casino as players experience less 'play time' on the machine, busting out of their buy-in at an earlier point. Casinos that reduce paytables generally have to increase promotions to compensate and attract customers.
9/5 Jacks or Better[edit]
9/5 Jacks or Better is a low pay version of the game. The payout for making a Flush is cut from 6x your bet to 5x your bet, but all other payouts remain the same. This reduces the maximum payout percentage to 98.45% for players betting five coins per hand to receive the Royal Flush bonus.
8/6 Jacks or Better[edit]
8/6 Jacks or Better is another often used pay table for Jacks or Better games. The payout for making a Full House is cut from 9x your bet to 8x your bet, while all other payouts remain the same as in a full pay game. This reduces the maximum payout percentage to 98.39% for players betting five coins per hand to receive the Royal Flush bonus.
8/5 Jacks or Better[edit]
8/5 Jacks or Better cuts the Full House payout from 9x your bet to 8x your bet, and also cuts the Flush payout from 6x your bet to 5x your bet. All other payouts remain the same as in a full pay game. This reduces the maximum payout percentage to 97.30% for players betting five coins per hand to receive the Royal Flush bonus. A common promotion used by casinos to encourage play on this tight paytable was to add a 2% progressive meter to the royal flush.
7/5 Jacks or Better[edit]
7/5 Jacks or Better cuts the Full House payout from 9x your bet to 7x your bet, and also cuts the Flush payout from 6x your bet to 5x your bet. All other payouts remain the same as in a full pay game. This reduces the maximum payout percentage to 96.15% for players betting five coins per hand to receive the Royal Flush bonus.
6/5 Jacks or Better[edit]
6/5 Jacks or Better cuts the Full House payout from 9x your bet to 6x your bet, and also cuts the Flush payout from 6x your bet to 5x your bet. All other payouts remain the same as in a full pay game. This reduces the maximum payout percentage to 95.00% for players betting five coins per hand to receive the Royal Flush bonus.
Progressive jackpot games[edit]
Other kinds of video poker only have positive theoretical returns when the progressive jackpot is high enough. Many establishments advertise with a billboard when the progressive jackpot is high enough. Otherwise sub-optimal games like 8/5 jacks or better can become positive expectation when the jackpot is large enough.
Terminology[edit]
As with regular poker, there are many different terms and phrases that are associated with playing video poker. Not knowing these terms may cause a disadvantage to anyone playing the game. The most important video poker terms [7] have been added to the table below.
| Video Poker Term | Explanation |
|---|---|
| Full Pay | The highest paying variant of a video poker game. Typically with high return-to-player game percentages. |
| Low Pay | Refers to video poker games which increase the house edge and reduce the return-to-player percentage. |
| Natural Royal Flush | A unique case when the highest possible hand, a Royal Flush, is dealt to the player. |
| Power Poker | Theoretically the most profitable poker strategy. |
| Multi-Play | A feature that allows participants to play with more than one hand. |
| Hold | When a player chooses to keep the cards in their hand. |
| Auto Hold | A feature available in certain video poker games. If turned on, the game automatically chooses which cards to hold. |
| Not So Ugly Ducks (NSUD) | A game most well-known for paying 16 for a 5 of a kind and 10 for a straight flush. |
| Game Denomination | Refers to the value of the cards or the coin size in a video poker game. |
| Flush | A five-card hand that contains cards of the same suit. |
| Discard | The cards you decide to throw away after the initial deal. |
| Draw | The second deal of the cards, after you have decided which cards to hold and which to discard. |
| Hand | The five cards (or less) dealt on the screen are known as a hand. |
See also[edit]
References[edit]
- ^Montero, David; Winton, Richard; Vives, Ruben (2017-10-09). 'In the solitary world of video poker, Stephen Paddock knew how to win. Until he didn't'. Los Angeles Times. ISSN0458-3035. Retrieved 2017-10-11.
- ^'Video Poker Rules & Gameplay'.
- ^'Learn Video Poker Rules and Video Poker Hand Values'. OnlineCasinosDoc.com. Retrieved 2010-08-05.
- ^'Video Poker Analyzer - Wizard of Odds'. wizardofodds.com.
- ^Video Poker Optimum Play, Dan Paymar, Table 9: Attractiveness Quotient of Selected Games, page 175, ISBN1-886070-11-3
- ^Robbing the One-Armed Bandits, Charles Lund, 1999, ISBN091057510X, page 37ff
- ^'Video Poker Online Guide'. online-gambling.com. Retrieved 2019-09-17.
External links[edit]
| Wikimedia Commons has media related to Video poker. |
- Video Poker Guides at Curlie
This video poker strategy page and the accompanying section have a single goal—to help you get the best odds when gambling at a casino. Video poker, unlike many casino games, offers you at least some degree of control over the odds. Games like roulette and slot machines have no strategy. The decisions you make are essentially meaningless.
Video poker, on the other hand, resembles blackjack. You can use strategic thinking to improve your chances of winning and decrease the house edge. This shouldn't be too much of a surprise, as both games use a deck of cards to play. Of course, in the case of blackjack, you're usually looking at a real deck of cards. In video poker, you're using a virtual deck that's actually being simulated using a random number generator.
But legitimate video poker games duplicate the odds you'd see if you were using a real deck of cards.
And that's why you can use a strategy to improve your odds. We talk more about that in the next section.
Why Does Video Poker Have a Strategy?
When you're playing a slot machine, you have no idea what the probability of a particular symbol coming up on a particular reel is. That probability is determined by the random number generator.
A random number generator is a computer program that constantly cycles through numbers at the rate of thousands of numbers per second. Each number corresponds to a different stop on the reel in a slot machine game. Or in the case of a video poker game, each number corresponds to a playing card.
But since you don't know anything about the probability of getting a particular symbol on a slot machine game, it's impossible to make any kind of strategic decision.
In fact, even if you DID know the probabilities of getting each symbol on the reel, you still wouldn't be able to make a decision that would affect your outcome.
There are no decisions to be made. You put your money in, your spin the reels, and you accept the outcome.
Several, if not most, casino games are like this. You have no way of affecting the odds no matter how smart you are. The odds of winning a single number bet in roulette are 37 to 1, no matter what kind of strategy you use.
That's why video poker (and blackjack) are different. You DO have the opportunity to make decisions which affect your outcome.
Understanding why requires looking into the math behind the game a little bit.
Expected Return, Payback Percentages & the House Edge
The expected return of a bet, video poker or otherwise, can be calculated if you know the probability of winning and losing. You also need to know how much you stand to win and how much you stand to lose.
You multiply the probability of winning by the amount you're going to win. You multiply the probability of losing by the amount you're going to lose. You add those two numbers together to get your overall expectation.
Suppose we set up a really simple gambling game where you're going to flip a coin. If you guess the correct outcome, you win 25 cents. But if you're wrong, you lose 50 cents.
In this example you have a 50% chance of winning and a 50% chance of losing. 50% of 25 cents is 12.5 cents, which is the first part of your equation. 50% of 50 cents is -25 cents. (It's negative because that's the amount you lose.)
Your expected loss on that bet is 12.5 cents.
You won't lose 12.5 cents every time. That would be impossible.
But if you tallied all your net wins and losses over time, and if you played for a long time, your results would eventually start to conform to the mathematical expectation.
Return is usually measured as a percentage. In this case, 12.5 cents is 50% of the original bet, so your expected return is -50%.
That's an awful bet. Most experienced gamblers wouldn't take it.
But it's an example of how the casino gets its edge in every game in the casino.
This same kind of math can be applied to video poker games and to slot machine games to determine a payback percentage. The payback percentage is just the amount of money you expect to win back from the casino for every $100 you wager over a long period of time.
Keep in mind that in the short run, anything can and often will happen. You can win a big jackpot early in your session, and your results won't look anything like the mathematically expected payback percentage.
But the longer you play, the closer your results will get to the mathematically predicted results. Over an infinite number of trials, you would certainly have results which mirror the mathematical prediction.
The house edge, on the other hand, is the amount of each bet that the house mathematically expects to keep. It's the opposite of the payback percentage.
Poker Hands Calculator
In the case of a full pay Jacks or Better game, the payback percentage is 99.54%. So the house edge is 0.46%.
That means for every $100 you bet, the casino expects you to win $99.54. They expect to win 46 cents. https://depositfinancial-batmanvssupermangamesfreedownload.peatix.com.
Those are long term expectations, though. In the short run, anything can happen.
All of that background is necessary for understanding why video poker strategy matters.
Since you know the odds of being dealt a particular hand, and you know the odds of improving a hand, you can compare your choices in a video poker game to go with the choice that has the better expected return.
You're playing Jacks or Better, and you have 4 cards to a royal flush, but you also have a pair. You could play this hand in a number of ways.
You have a number of options in this example:
- You could throw all 5 cards away and start over. That's obviously the play with the lowest expected value.
- You could throw away all the cards except the pair. In this case, you're hoping to improve your hand to 2 pairs, 3 of a kind, or a full house.
- Or you could throw away the card that makes the pair and try to draw the royal flush.
Since you have a pair, you have a 100% chance of winning at least 1 unit. That's an expected value of $1. But it's actually a little better than that, because you also have the chance to improve the hand. Let's just call it an expected value move of $1.50.
But a royal flush has a payout of 800 to 1. The odds of drawing the card you need for that hand are 1 in 47, but any time you get a 46 to 1 shot at an 800 to 1 payout, you should take it. The expected value of that play is huge.
You have a roughly 2% chance of winning $800. That's $16. You also have a roughly 98% chance of losing $1. That's -98 cents.
$16 – 98 cents = $15.02, which is a heck of a lot more than $1.50.
The correct choice is clear, even though you're going to lose this bet more often than not. On the occasions when you do win, your winnings are going to be so large that they'll make up for all the times you lost the bet and then some.
Not all situations in video poker are that clear. In fact, a human can't just sit there and work out the correct play in every situation using a pencil and paper.
Luckily, we have computers for that.
You can find a video poker strategy chart for just about any variation available. In fact, you can even find websites which will generate the perfect strategy for you based on the game and the pay table that you input.
Here's how such a strategy chart works:
- You get a list of hands.
- At the top of the list is the best possible hand.
- You work your way down the list until you find a hand that matches what you have.
- When you get to that hand, you stop and keep the cards that are listed.
Almost all video poker strategy charts start with a royal flush as the top listed hand. That makes sense. After all, you would never throw away the top paying hand in the game. That would just be silly.
In most games, 4 of a kind and a straight flush will also be at the top of the list—those are usually the top 3 hands with the best payouts.
But the next best hand after that?
You'll always hold on to 4 cards to a royal flush.
That's some strategy advice based on Jacks or Better, but the strategy for Deuces Wild is a little bit different.
For one thing, you'll always look at lists of potential hands based on how many deuces you have. One of the fundamental tenets of Deuces Wild strategy is that you never discard a 2.
Then based on how many deuces you have in your hand, you have a list of potential hands to choose from. Start at the top and work your way down.
Another way of thinking about video poker strategy is to think about potentially conflicting hands.
You have 3 cards to a royal flush, but you also have a pair. Do you keep the pair, or do you go for the royal flush?
In this case, you keep the pair. Your odds of hitting the royal flush go down exponentially when you need 2 cards to complete your hand.
Cook&039 n recipe organizer 12 14 6 ply. In probability, when you want to know the odds of event A happening AND event B happening at the same time, you multiple the probabilities by each other.
In the event of filling a royal flush, each card has a 1/47 chance of showing up. The odds of getting both cards are 1/47 X 1/47, which is about 1 in 2500. And 800 to 1 payout doesn't warrant that kind of risk, especially if you've got a sure winning in your hand already.
The strategy varies from game to game because the payouts vary from game to game. In Bonus Poker, which is basically just Jacks or Better with a bonus payout for a 4 of a kind, you might be more likely to draw to your 4 of a kind in certain instances.
In Deuces Wild, the presence of the wild card makes a huge difference to how you play your hands. You need much stronger hands to win, but those wild cards make it easier to get those hands. One of the fundamental tenets of Deuces Wild strategy is to never discard a deuce.
Jacks or Better
The basics of Jacks or Better strategy are pretty simple.
First check to see if you have one of the following 3 paying hands:
If you have any of those, keep what you've got and collect your winnings.
If you don't have any of those, check to see if you have 4 cards to a royal flush. If you do, keep those 4 cards and try to hit the royal.
4 cards to a royal flush trumps everything except those 3 hands we mentioned above.
If you don't have 4 cards to a royal flush, then look to see if you have any of these other 'made hands':
- Full House
- Flush
- Straight
- 3 of a Kind
If you have any of those, keep it and collect your winnings.
If not, check to see if you have 4 cards to a straight flush. If you do, then draw to that straight flush.
Then check to see if you have one of the following 2 paying hands:
You'll keep those over the other options below.
Once you get to that point, you're looking at speculative hands. Your best speculative hand at this point is 3 cards to a royal flush. It's a long shot, but if you don't already have one of the other hands listed above, that's what you should go for.
Then if you have 4 to a flush, try to fill your flush.
If you have a low pair, try to draw to 3 of a kind or better.
A full strategy chart will have several more hands for you to go through, but you get the idea.
Jacks or Better strategy just isn't that hard. Even though this isn't a complete strategy chart, you're probably only giving up a few tenths of a percent of payback percentage following these guidelines.
Our guide to Jacks or Better video poker covers the correct strategy in more detail.
Content
If you have 4 deuces, you'll keep them.
If you have 3 deuces, you'll keep them. You're hoping for a royal flush.
If you have 2 deuces, you'll keep both of them. You'll hope for a 4 of a kind or better, but if you don't have that, try for a royal flush or a straight flush.
If you only have one deuce, strategy gets a little harder. Pay with skrill. But it's still just a list to go down:
- 4 of a Kind or better
- 4 to a Royal Flush
- Full House
- 4 to a Straight Flush
- Flush, Straight, or 3 of a Kind
- 3 to a Royal Flush
And so on.
The payback percentages for Deuces Wild games are all over the place. Unlike Jacks or Better, which has an easy to understand system for adjusting the payback percentage, Deuces Wild pay tables can vary quite a bit from one another.
Your best bet, when choosing a Deuces Wild game, is to use some kind of online tool to determine the payback percentage for the game with the pay table you're considering.
For a detailed discussion of Deuces Wild strategy, please see our page on Deuces Wild video poker.
The optimal strategy for Bonus Poker, which offers a bonus payout for 4 of a kind hands, is so similar to the optimal strategy for Jacks or Better as to be almost indistinguishable.
If you just used the same strategy, you'd probably be giving up less than 0.2%.
It is good to know how to play Bonus Poker, though, because in many of today's casinos, it's the video poker game with the highest payout percentage.
We have an entire page dedicated to Bonus Poker, and it includes detailed strategy advice.
Joker Poker
Winning Video Poker Hands
Joker Poker has some similarities to Deuces Wild, but it's not as complicated. You'll only ever see a single joker in the deck, which changes the texture of the possible hands considerably.
You'll basically be presented with 2 basic strategy charts—one to follow if your hand includes a joker, and one to follow if it doesn't. The differences are subtle in some cases, but it's not too complicated.
We offer a full page on Joker Poker, too, which also includes a detailed discussion of the correct strategy for playing that game.
Video poker strategy resembles basic strategy in blackjack in many ways. They both represent the optimal way of playing every possible hand you could get.
Of course, the differences are obvious, too. Your goals in video poker are quite different from your goals in blackjack.
Most video poker strategy is just presented as a list. You start at the top, work your way down, and stop when you get to the hand that matches what you're holding in your hand. Then you keep the appropriate cards and move on.
We offer detailed strategies for almost all of the video poker games on our site on the appropriate pages. Please visit this page for a complete list of all the games we cover.
You may also be interested the following pages. These cover a range of subjects related to video poker strategy.
Video Poker Hands Chart
Video Poker Strategy Articles
Poker Hands Chart
- Video Poker Trainers
- Video Poker for Winner
- Video Poker Bankroll
- Video Poker Books
- Video Poker Cheat Sheets
- Video Poker Calculators
- Video Poker Comps
- Video Poker Double Up Feature
- Video Poker EV (Expected Value)
- Video Poker Hands and Hand Analyzers
- Video Poker House Edge
- Video Poker Lessons
- Video Poker Odds and Probability
- Video Poker Royal Flush Odds & Strategy
- Video Poker Risk of Ruin and Variance
- Video Poker Tutorial
- Bob Dancer: Video Poker Expert
- Jean Scott: The Frugal Gambler
