Video Poker

• The layout of the game
• Hand ranks
• Procedure of play
• The Jacks Or Better paytable
• What determines the payout?
• The Jacks Or Better hand-rank table
• Hand-rank nomenclature
• Why learn Jacks Or Better?
• Practise, practise, practise
• Volatility
• Useful video poker resources and articles
      • The Wizard Of Odds
      • The Gamemaster
      • About casino gambling
      • VP Genius

The layout of the game

Video poker is cross between a slot machine and a poker game: the format is that of a slot machine, with screen, buttons and coin drop, but the standard slot machine symbols are replaced by varying ranks of poker hands along with the corresponding payoff for each hand located to its right - collectively referred to as the "paytable".

As such, video poker differs from table poker in that the payoffs you receive for any winning hand are always a fixed amount, determined by the paytable, and not dependent on however much money there is in the pot of the live game.

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Hand ranks

The hierarchy of video poker hand ranks corresponds to table poker:

• Royal flush
• Straight flush
• Four of a kind
• Full house
• Flush
• Straight
• Three of a kind
• Two pair
• Pair

Some games contain "wild cards" or "jokers" (see the Deuces Wild page for more details), in which case certain other hand types come into play:

• Four deuces (the four wild cards in Deuces Wild)
• Five of a kind (a joker or wild cards together with cards of the same rank)
• Joker royal (a joker with four suited royal cards)
• Wild royal (a combination of court cards and wild cards)

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Procedure of play

You are dealt five initial cards, of which you can then hold or discard as many as you choose. If you have a made hand - such as a full house - hold all five cards. If you have nothing worth holding, discard them all and draw five new cards. Each card you discard is then replaced by another card from the pack, and your new selection of five cards represents your final hand.

Any winning hand is paid out according to the paytable, after which you proceed to the next hand.

Here is a graphic illustration of the above process:

Jacks Or Better pre-deal

This is a typical initial screen; some software types require you to physically insert "coins" into the machine; others simply let you play directly from your balance. You now have two options: "bet max" or "bet one"; always click on "bet max" (see below for an explanation of this) -

Jacks Or Better after the deal

The machine deals your initial five cards and the paytable lights up any paying hand you've been dealt - on this occasion, a Jacks Or Better pair, two queens. At this point you have to make your decision about which cards to discard and which to hold; in this case...

jacks Or Better, holding a Queen pair

...you hold the pair of queens and then click the "draw" button to replace the three discards with three new cards from the deck:

Jacks Or Better, the draw

The machine deals you the replacement cards, and the new five-card combination represents your final hand - in this case, I converted a high pair into a full house and was paid $45 for my $5 initial bet - 9:1.

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The "Jacks Or Better" paytable

Below is the paytable for the Jacks Or Better game featured in the above sequence:

jacks or better paytable

There are five columns representing the number of coins you can wager, from one through to five. If you look at the top right hand corner at the Royal Flush payout in the "five coins" column you'll see that that Royal payout is larger, in relation to the other payouts in that column, than in any of the other four columns to the left. For instance, in the first four columns the Royal pays five times more than the straight flush; in the "five coins" column it pays fully sixteen times more.

At the risk of stating the obvious: always wager maximum coins (five); if you don't, you'll give away an awful lot of overall value.

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What determines the payout?

Two factors determine the payout of any video poker machine: paytable and player strategy. Each paytable has a maximum payout that can be achieved with optimum strategy; the best payout achievable on the above Jacks Or Better paytable above is 99.54% - with perfect strategy; make mistakes and you will not achieve that payout.

Learning correct strategy can be quite a task, but it's worth it; not only will you achieve the best payout possible, but in addition there are video poker games with payouts well above 99.54%.

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Jacks Or Better hand-rank table

The best way to learn accurate strategy is with a hand-rank chart - see below: look at your cards and decide if you have anything corresponding to the hands on the chart. If you have, hold the appropriate cards. If you have TWO possible hands, choose the highest-ranked hand.

For example, if you're dealt the following initial five cards...

2d, 5c, 2h, 9s, Ks

...your 2D 2H pair corresponds to rank number 15, "low" pair, so hold the twos and discard the rest. If you're dealt...

5d, 10d, Jd, Qd, Kd

...you have both a five card flush (6) and four to a royal flush (4); the four royal is higher, so discard the 5D and hold the four royal cards.

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1. Pat royal flush
2. Pat straight flush
3. Pat four of a kind
4. 4 to a royal flush
5. Pat full house
6. Pat flush
7. 3 of a kind
8. Pat straight
9. 4 to a straight flush
10. Two pair
11. High pair
12. 3 to a royal flush
13. 4 to a flush
14. 4 to an outside straight with 3 high cards
15. Low pair
16. 4 to an outside straight with 0-2 high cards
17. 3 to a straight flush, spread 5, 2 high cards
18. 3 to a straight flush, spread 4, 1 high card
19. 3 to a straight flush, spread 3, 0 high cards
20. Suited jack and queen
21. 4 to an inside straight, 4 high cards
22. 2 suited high cards, king highest
23. 2 suited high cards, ace highest
24. 4 to an inside straight, 3 high cards
25. 3 to a straight flush, spread 5, 1 high card
26. 3 to a straight flush, spread 4, 0 high cards
27. Unsuited JQK
28. Unsuited JQ
29. Suited TJ
30. 2 unsuited high cards king highest
31. Suited TQ
32. 2 unsuited high cards ace highest
33. J only
34. Suited TK
35. Q only
36. K only
37. A only
38. 3 to a straight flush, spread 5, 0 high cards

(There are some rare exceptions to the above chart which can be found on Michael Shakleford's Jacks Or Better page.)

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Hand-rank nomenclature

• "Spread 4" and "spread 5" - see hands 17 and 18 - means spanning four or five cards; for instance: 3D, 5D and 7D are three cards to a straight flush "spread 5"; 4D, 5D and 7D are the same but "spread 4"; these are also referred to as "double inside" and "inside" draws respectively.

• An "inside" straight - see hand 21 - is a four-card straight that requires just one specific card for completion - usually an "inside" card; for instance: 4D, 5C, 6C and 8H requires a 7 to complete the hand. Equally, an ace, 2, 3 and 4 is also an "inside" draw, since it can only be completed on one side, with a 5 - as is jack, queen king and ace, which requires a 10.

• An "outside" straight - see hand 16 - is a four-card straight that can be completed on either side; for instance: 5C, 6H, 7D and 8H can be completed with either a 4 or a 9.

• A "low pair" in this game is any pair 10 or below.

• A "high pair" is any pair of jacks or higher.

• A "high card" is a jack, queen, king or ace.

For more detail on inside, double inside, one-gap and two-gap (alternative nomenclature for "spread four" and "spread five"), see the article "The inside story" by Skip Hughes.

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Why learn Jacks Or Better?

I would recommend learning optimal Jacks Or Better strategy for the following reasons:

• It's the basic video poker game which spawned all the many variants that subsequently emerged; you need to start somewhere and this is as good a place as any.

• A machine that pays at least 4880 coins on the royal represents an overall payout of 100%, so if you can find such a "progressive" jackpot pushing the game above that level you'll be gambling with an advantage - see the article on hand frequencies and percentage returns for more information on this.

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Practise, practise, practise

Playing perfect video poker isn't easy, and I heartily recommend that you do NOT jump straight in at the deep end wagering with real money. Practise first and monitor your play for accuracy. Here are three good practice tools:

• Bob Dancer's excellent Winpoker software. Amongst its many other functions it can analyse the average payout for any set of rules, so using it in conjunction with another - Video Poker Strategy Master by TomSki, also available at Zamzone, which generates hand-rank charts for any paytable you plug into it - you can both analyse a game, produce the optimal hand-rank chart and practise the game.

• A good non-download alternative for practice, training and and just about everything else you could want is VP Genius. For more details on this excellent resource, see my VP Genius article.

• Another excellent non-download option is Michael Shakelford's video poker practice utility. There are thirty six games to choose from, with autoplay, warning and auto-hold functions, and a variable speed setting. After the deal, you can choose to analyse the hand or request a hint for the correct play. Another comprehensive little utility.

Never play video poker on a whim. Assuming at some point you want to play games other than the three discussed on this site, ensure that you know both the average payout of the game and the optimal strategy to achieve that payout. Failing both these you'll find yourself swimming expensively in the dark

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Volatility

Video poker is highly volatile. A large chunk of that "average payout" is tied up in the royal flush - on average about 2%. Royal flushes occur approximately once in every 40,000 hands, which means you'll play an awful lot of hands without a significant portion of your payout as you wait for the allusive royal to hit. It's possible to play even 200,000 without hitting one. At the same time, it's just as possible - more so, in fact - to hit ten or more.

The point of all this?

Expect large swings in your bankroll playing video poker. Playing winning video poker is not for the faint-hearted.

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Useful video poker resources and articles on the web

Next article: RTG Deuces Wild: