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.
History[edit]
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Video poker expert, Linda Boyd, gives details on how to properly play 10 common Jacks or Better hands. Some of the hands covered include: four card straight. More and more major casino game developers are creating exciting new releases of video poker games. Each of the decent online casino sites in turn offers their customers a unique experience and different ways to win jackpots by playing a combination of two classic casino awards. Video poker is a casino game based on five-card draw poker. It is played on a computerized console similar in size to a slot machine. After inserting money (or a barcoded paper ticket. Play Video Poker Online. Video Poker is a strategy-based casino card game. This exciting poker variant is played against a computer, not other players. It's fast, fun, and plenty rewarding. Now you can enjoy classic 5-card draw poker from the comforts of home, or on the go right here at 888casino. You're dealt 5 cards, and you get to decide which cards to hold and which cards to fold. Strangely, many hardcore casino fans don't take video poker particularly seriously but apply a video poker strategy and you can help yourself to win more often than you lose. Many US players can now take part in online play, either using their desktop or through a video poker app.
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.
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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% |
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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'. The higher payoff of the flush attack represents one of the higher overlays of video poker. These machines, once common, are now relatively rare. Jugar online gratis.
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.
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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]
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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
Unless you've done formal research on video poker, you should probably take a moment, right now, to forget everything you think you know about the subject. If you're anything like me, you have probably spent your life making three faulty assumptions about video poker.
Faulty assumption #1: Video poker machines are just a specialized version of slot machines.
This is like saying that diamonds are a subcategory of coal just because they are both made of the same substance (carbon).
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Although slot machines and video poker machines are both metal boxes with buttons, lights, buzzers, and payout trays, the inner workings of a video poker machine are mathematically unrelated to the inner workings of a slot machine.
In the U.S.A., video poker is regulated so that the random number generator really does have to deal cards to players as if they are coming from a freshly shuffled 52-card deck (or occasionally 53- or 54-card decks in games with jokers). Video poker is a completely different kind of game than slots; it is a game of skill rather than luck; it is, in many ways, the blackjack of electronic gaming options because skilled players of video poker can often reduce the house edge to 1% or less.
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Faulty assumption #2: Strategy is irrelevant because the random number generator will simply decide whether you win or lose according to a predetermined payout formula.
This is a corollary of the first faulty assumption. I can remember foolishly chuckling when I first saw video poker players in Las Vegas who consulted cheat sheets in their laps to decide which cards to hold and which to discard. For years, I genuinely believed that out of any given set of plays, the machines were programmed to give players a preset number of straights or pairs or royal flushes–regardless of what the players did.
I thought that the discard step in video poker was simply included in the game for entertainment value and that it did not give players any real power over the outcome of their hands. I was wrong. When you decide which cards in your hand to hold and which ones to replace, you are, as it turns out, really making a decision that affects the outcome of your hand. With many video poker machines, if you play perfect strategy every time, you will win more often than not.
CAUTION: This is only true for the machines on 'full-pay' settings, which is why many casinos reconfigure their video poker machines according to a 'short-pay' formula. We'll discuss full-pay vs. short-pay machines in greater detail below.
Faulty assumption #3: Since poker is in the title, poker strategy must be the right strategy for video poker.
A traditional poker game is far more dynamic than video poker. You don't win poker games simply by trying to make your hand the best it can be every time. Very often, in a poker game, the best your hand can possibly be is the second best hand at the table, which may cause you to lose more money than would have been the case if you had simply folded at the outset. Traditional poker rewards you for thinking not only about your own hand, but about what the competing hands at the table are likely to be (based on your own inferences about what it means for the person to your right to have drawn only one card or the tendency of the person on your left to smile when she bluffs). Video poker can be incredibly liberating in this regard. You don't ever have to wonder whether three of a kind will be enough to beat the other people at the table. Three of a kind is a winner, plain and simple.
Getting Started
The good news: You only need to know two things to start playing video poker like a champ.
The bad news: Both of those things are complicated.
1) Full-pay vs. short-pay
First, it is critical for you to be able to distinguish full-pay from short-pay machines. Unfortunately, given the number of video poker machines on the market (with new models being released all the time), it is impossible for any single website or book to serve as a comprehensive source of information. Unless you stick to the older and more common versions of video poker ('Jacks or Better' is the most thoroughly studied option), you may have to do some research on the machine you want to play.
However, once you know that the 'Joker Wild' video poker machine (for example) is supposed to pay players seven tokens back for every token inserted on a full house, then you will be able to consult the machine, which has to display the pay table (either on an electronic screen that appears when the machine is not in use or on a sticker or etched into the glass). You may find a 'Joker Wild' machine that pays some weird extra bonus on five queens, but only gives players back 6 coins for each coin inserted on a full house. https://downiload630.weebly.com/play-pai-gow-poker-online.html. That's a short-pay machine, and you probably don't want anything to do with it.
On full-pay settings, the most popular video poker game ('Jacks or Better') pays 9 tokens for each token inserted on a full house and 5 tokens for each token inserted on a flush. Machines that retain these factory settings are called 9/6 machines, as distinct from the 8/5 machines that reduce the payouts on full houses and flushes by one token each. The 8/5 machines may be linked to a progressive pot that justifies the strain they put on a player's bankroll, but unless you know for a fact that you want access to the bonus or promotion the machines offer to offset the reduction from 9/6 to 8/5, stick to the 9/6 versions.
2) Know the expert strategy appropriate for the machine you are playing
Strategy in video poker is not guesswork. Correct strategy is derived mathematically from the pay table of the game in question in conjunction with the laws of probability. Each card in your initial hand presents you with a binary choice: you can either hold it or discard it for a replacement. Since you have only two options for each card, that gives you 32 possible ways of responding to the cards you are dealt (2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 = 32). Of those 32 possibilities, one will be the best choice every single time, and the proper calculations will tell you what that choice is. If you are mathematically inclined, you can do those calculations yourself–though you will probably want to work them out before going to the casino!
Since I'm not a big fan of re-inventing the wheel, I let other people (and their computers) do the calculations for me. Then all I have to do is find a full-pay version of the machine I want to play and apply the principles of the cheatsheet that I have photocopied or downloaded (or, in certain cases, memorized) in advance.
Remember that the strategy for traditional poker is out the window when we play video poker. The only memory you need to hang on to from your poker playing days is probably the ranking of hands:
Hand Definition Example
Royal flush 5 cards of the same suit in sequential order from 10 to ace 10♠, J♠, Q♠, K♠, A♠ How to run an ios app on windows.
Straight flush 5 cards of the same suit in sequential order A♠, 2♠, 3♠, 4♠, 5♠
4 of a kind 4 cards of the same rank 9♠, 9♥, 9♦, 9♣
Full house 3 cards of the same rank + 1 pair 4♠, 4♥, 4♦, 7♠, 7♣
Flush 5 cards of the same suit 3♠, 6♠, 9♠, J♠, K♠
Straight 5 cards in sequential order 7♠, 8♥, 9♣, 10♦, J♠
Three of a kind 3 cards of the same rank 5♠, 5♥, 5♦
Two pair 2 sets of 2 cards of the same rank 8♥, 8♦, 3♠, 3♦
One pair 2 cards of the same rank Q♠, Q♥
Remember the difference between drawing to an inside straight and an outside straight? If you have 4 cards in sequential order (such as a 6, 7, 8, and 9 with a 2 in the fifth spot), then discarding the deuce gives you eight chances of finishing the straight (any of the four 5s or any of the four 10s will do the trick). This is called an outside straight because it can be finished at either end. An inside straight, by contrast, requires you to fill in a blank in the middle. Say you have a 6, 8, 9, 10, queen. Discarding the queen is NOT the same choice as discarding the deuce in the previous example, for there are only four cards in the deck (the sevens) that will fill out this inside straight.
The first lesson my mama ever taught me about poker was this: 'Never draw to an inside straight. Only losers take that risk.'
In video poker, there will be times when your best option is to draw to an inside straight. There will also be times when a lower card is more valuable than a higher card.
I'll pause here to address this counterintuitive point because it can be hard for the uninitiated to swallow. In traditional poker, let's say I'm dealt a hand of complete junk: 5♣, 7♦, 9♥, 10♠, and K♣. If I'm allowed to dump four cards even without an ace, which four would I dump?
In a regular poker game, I'll hold onto the king because it's my highest card. Keeping the king gives me a much better chance of ending up with a pair of kings than a pair of tens, and a pair of kings will come in handy if the second best hand at the table is a pair of queens (whereas a pair of tens would lose).
However, if I am playing a version of video poker that treats ALL pairs as equal, then the king is actually a less useful card to me than any of the others I've been dealt. If I'm going to hold one card and draw four new ones, I will probably be better off hanging on to any card in my junk hand other than the king.
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Because that king is so high in the pecking order of cards that it can only be included in two straights, whereas each of the other four cards in my hand could end up working in five different straights. Remember, I'm not playing against anyone else at the table. I'm playing against the pay table of the machine, and if this machine makes no distinction between a pair of fives and a pair of kings, then neither should I.
Of course, if you are playing the 'Jacks or Better' machine, then a pair of kings really is better than a pair of fives. It's the difference between getting your money back and losing it to the machine, so playing smart means playing according to the strategy appropriate to the machine you are using.
Max Bets
Most video poker machines are designed to offer the best return on investment on one specific hand (usually a royal flush), and they typically only make this payout on maximum bets. Playing anything less than the maximum bet, in such cases, means losing out on the chance to win the one true jackpot that the machine offers. Once you become serious about video poker, you should stick to maximum bets as much as possible.
However, the possibility of hitting that one jackpot is statistically remote enough for beginners to feel justified in betting less than the maximum while they are getting a feel for the game. Casino regulars will look at you funny if you put anything less than the maximum bet in a video poker machine because it is almost always a mistake to play a single token in a machine that allows you to play three or five. But if you're just starting out, you can let them glare at you while you decide whether video poker is your kind of game or not. Don't feel obliged to stress your bankroll on a game you are just learning.
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- Payouts: Bitcoin, Check by Courier
- Deposit Methods – Bitcoin, Visa, MasterCard, American Express
#2 For US Players – Las Vegas USA
Types of Poker Play – 7 Stud Poker, Aces and Eights, All American Poker, Seven Wild, Bonus Deuces Wild, Bonus Poker, Deuces Wild, Joker Poker, Loose Deuces, Pick em Poker, Mystery Bonus Poker, Double Bonus Poker, Double Double Bonus Poker, Double Double Jackpot Poker, Double Jackpot Poker, European Slot Poker, and Jacks or Better.
- Specific Bonuses – $3000, 150% Video Poker Bonus
- Betting Limits – $100
- Payouts – Neteller, Withdrawal Methods ACH, Cheque, Money Order
- Deposit Methods – MasterCard, Visa, Skrill, Neteller, eWallet Xpress, Money Order
