About – Video Poker

Video Poker is a five card draw based poker game played in casinos as well as online and in small establishments that is played on a computer console like a slot machine. To play video poker, a player will place a bet of credits by inserting money or newer bar-coded tickets that have credits on them. The player then presses a button that says deal, and cards are drawn at random. The player is given the chance at this time to either keep one or more cards or discard them and exchange these cards for others drawn from the same ‘virtual’ deck on the machine. Once the draw is complete, the machine looks at the hand the player has, and the offers a payout based on if it is a winning hand pictured in a pay schedule.

On most video poker machines, a payout will begin with a minimum hand of two Jacks, but the pay tables can be found posted on the front or side of the machine. The payout amounts are based on how common the hands are, so they are based on the return the player chooses to offer as a bet. Jacks or better is considered the most common type of video poker, and payout starts for one pair of jacks or a better hand. Full pay jack or better hands are also known as a 9/6 jacks better where the 9 is the payout for a full house or a 6 is payout for a flush. This version of the game has a return of about 99.3% when played with an actual strategy.

For one credit in most games, a royal flush is worth 250 credits, worth 500 credits when 2 credits are bet and is worth 1,000 credits when a bet of 4 credits is made. A straight flush with a one credit bet is worth 50 points, with a 4 credit bet being worth 200 credits. A four of a kind normally sits with a return of 25 credits for a one credit bet while a full house is worth 9 credits on a one credit bet. A regular flush is worth 6 credits on a one credit bet, and a straight is worth 4 credits in the same manner. Lastly, a three of a kind is worth 3 credits on a one credit bet with two pairs worth 2 credits and a jack or better is worth one credit on the same bet.

There are many variations on this gameused in casinos including tens or better, all American and deuces wild. The all American is more or less a game of jacks or better with higher payouts for all flushes and below. Tens or better is a variation of the jacks or better 6/5 game with the minimum hand requiring payout being a pair of tens. The deuces wild game allows all twos to be wild cards so the payout can actually be possible on every hand played when done with a strategy in mind.