- Best Strategy For Video Poker
- Video Poker Optimal Strategy
- Optimal Strategy Definition
- Video Poker Optimal Strategy
- Video Poker Basic Strategy
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 Strategy Charts Video poker is one of the few casino games where the player's input has a major effect on the outcome of the game. Every time you push Deal you receive five new cards and have a total of thirty-two ways to play the hand.
- A fully paid video poker machine will give you the best payouts meaning that you'll make more cash when you get winning hands. In Jacks or Better, the most popular variant of poker video (the one where you will need a pair of jacks to win gains), a glance at the payout table will let you know if the machine offers full payments or not. Just look at the repayment associated with full and color.
- Steve and Matt Bourie, from the American Casino Guide, give their five best tips for winning at video poker. Topics covered include: getting a player's club.
- See full list on wizardofodds.com.
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.
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.
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.
Many blackjack players like to practice with free versions of the game. This online blackjack practice enables them to test out various strategies and really know their odds before embarking on. Blackjack is a fairly uncomplicated but very compelling card game to play, and its popularity isn't all that surprising. Nevertheless, learning to play properly can be a little arduous at times because of the. Click chips from your bank to move them onto the table and make your bet. Click chips on the table to take them back. Click Deal, and the dealer will toss you two cards. Options to Hit, Stand.
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.
Best Strategy For Video Poker
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. 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
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.
Video Poker Optimal Strategy
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.
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.
Many blackjack players like to practice with free versions of the game. This online blackjack practice enables them to test out various strategies and really know their odds before embarking on. Blackjack is a fairly uncomplicated but very compelling card game to play, and its popularity isn't all that surprising. Nevertheless, learning to play properly can be a little arduous at times because of the. Click chips from your bank to move them onto the table and make your bet. Click chips on the table to take them back. Click Deal, and the dealer will toss you two cards. Options to Hit, Stand. Use our Blackjack Training Drills to master blackjack basic strategy and card counting: Our Basic Strategy Drill trains you at basic strategy so you never make a wrong playing decision; Our card. Blackjack Practice is the best online space for learning, practicing and mastering the wonderful game of online Blackjack.
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.
Best Strategy For Video Poker
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. 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
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.
Video Poker Optimal Strategy
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 Strategy Articles
- 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
Video poker is one of the most popular games of both online casinos and physical casinos around the world. Most people ask, is it possible to play video poker and always win? Yes, of course! Video poker is one of the few casino games you can ‘tame' with an appropriate strategy. You may not become a professional video poker player, but, if you are looking for a casino game that differs from traditional poker and offers a positive expectation of winning (or a reduced home-advantage to its simplest device), video poker could become your favorite game. It will guarantee hours of entertainment for a small investment. Here's how to win at video poker!
Find The Right Video Poker Machine
For The Jacks Or Better
A fully paid video poker machine will give you the best payouts meaning that you'll make more cash when you get winning hands. In Jacks or Better, the most popular variant of poker video (the one where you will need a pair of jacks to win gains), a glance at the payout table will let you know if the machine offers full payments or not. Just look at the repayment associated with full and color. The full will normally be rewarded up to 9 against one and the color up to 6 against 1. This is the reason why these machines are often called ‘machines 9/6'.
As long as you use an optimal approach strategy, your chances of winning on this kind of machine are much better than those of other casino games. The home advantage is below the 1% mark. This means that the machine will make an average of 99 cents on every euro wagered. If you do not play optimally, the home advantage will be much larger: this is the reason why you should learn an unstoppable strategy before starting a game of video poker.
Optimal Strategy Definition
For The Wild Deuces
At Deuces Wild (the variant in which the two can come to replace any other card and where the table of gains starts at the set), the odds are also in favor of the player (as long as the latter applies an optimal game strategy). It is estimated that the home advantage is of the order of 1%. Try to find a machine that pays a straight flush of 9 to 1 and a square to a height of 5 to 1. By finding it, you will have the opportunity to play with a home advantage of 0.76%. The second most attractive video poker machine ‘Deuces Wild' pays full flush at 11 to 1, and the full house is 4 to 1. This is one of the fairest machines on the market because the advantage -house is only 0.04%.
Bet The Maximum Amount Of Coins To Be Eligible For Jackpots
Check out the winnings table of your video poker machine and linger on the payment grid: you will see that it is more interesting to bet the most chips possible to high your chances significantly. For example, the expectation of winning is much better with four chips of 25 cents than with a single chip of 1 $. In addition to signup bonuses, some video poker machines offer free spins and especially progressive jackpots! There are so many ways to increase the number of your earnings.
Adopt An Optimal Strategy For Video Poker
To win at video poker, you have to play to perfection. It's not more complicated than that! You will find many online strategy tables that will tell you exactly what to do in a particular situation. Keep them handy when you play online! Print them and keep an eye on them as there are cases where the strategy to be applied can be open to discussion. That said, video poker is still one of the very few casino games where you can genuinely play against the house on equal terms, as long as you apply an appropriate and unstoppable strategy to the letter.
Play Video Poker In The Limit Of Your Bankroll
Like most games of chance and money, video poker is subject to reversals in the short term. Make sure your budget is plump enough to cope with a series of long-lasting defeats. If progressive jackpots interest you, do not forget to play the maximum amount of chips allowed by the machine to be eligible. If your bankroll doesn't allow you to bet the maximum amount in each round, it is better to lower your claims and play more weighted by limiting the number of your bets.
Take The Time To Think And Reason
Do not hesitate to take full advantage of one essential piece of information or time. You don't need to bet wrongly, on the contrary. Take the time to think about the result of your decisions and, above all, take the time to have fun! As you can see, it's not that complicated to practice some strategic tips on getting winnings, even superficially. At the whim of your parties, also make it a habit to familiarize yourself with probabilities to help you determine which cards to keep and which cards to discard. Even though some online casinos give you suggestions on which cards to keep, you will be the only one to appreciate their reliability.
Video Poker Optimal Strategy
Play Video Poker With The Right Strategy
Many people think of video poker as a kind of slot machine. Casino spin poker. That's a very serious mistake. In video poker, you must make decisions that will have a major impact on the outcome of the game and, in doing so; the home advantage is significantly diminished. On some very specific video poker variants, the odds can even become to the advantage of the player in person.
Video Poker Basic Strategy
Some casinos offer these tempting conditions because they know full well that most players do not apply this valuable strategic advice. Even if half of the players took the trouble to play video poker with an optimal strategy, the casino would nevertheless maintain an excellent profit margin.
