Video Poker Strategy

When I first started playing video poker some 25 years ago, I knew about the importance of playing with an edge. At the start of my video poker playing career, it was fairly common to find video poker games that had a theoretical return over 100%, especially in the local’s casinos in Las Vegas (and in one casino in Mississippi). Most of the time, my wife and I played a deuces wild game called Full Pay Deuces Wild (or FPDW), which returned 5 coins per coin played for 4-of-a-kind and 15 coins for 5-of-a-kind.

It is no secret that returns from video poker games have been on the decline. Such is capitalism. Consider the following three pay tables for the Jacks or Better video poker game.

I received an email from a video poker player who asked me this question:

“I can never win at video poker. Are the video poker machines rigged?”

(Note: I’m not telling this story just to brag about my good fortune but rather to use it as a teaching example for video poker players.)

In a previous article, I bemoaned my long royal flush drought in which I played about 270,000 hands between one royal flush and the next one.  Then boom … I found myself in another mini-drought beginning in July 2019, lasting until the middle of December 2019. I was hoping for one more royal before the year ended. Here’s what happened.

The playing strategy for most of the hands you’ll receive when you play the popular Jacks or Better video poker game is a no-brainer because it’s fairly obvious which cards you should hold and which ones you should discard. But then there are the not so obvious hands in which you must choose between two (or more) possible plays. For example, how would you play a hand in Jacks or Better that contains

Joker’s Wild is a fun variation on video poker, one that has carved out its own niche of loyal players. Like all video poker games, Joker’s Wild comes in a variety of pay tables and payback percentages. 

Unlike the rest, it comes with a basic divide: Some games start the pay table at two pairs, and others start it at a pair of Kings.

And beyond that, there’s an intriguing variation. One version of Joker’s Wild Kings or Better puts the top payback on five of a kind instead of a royal flush. 

Let’s face it. What all video poker players hope (and pray) for is that the next hand will give them a royal flush because that results in an immediate 4,000 coin payoff. But did you ever wonder what the chance that this will happen when you hold, say, four cards to a royal flush?  How about holding three cards to a royal?  And what is the chance of being dealt a royal flush on the initial deal? I’ve summarized the answers to these questions below and they may surprise you.

Every video poker game has its strategy quirks dictated by their pay table. How to play video poker and get the most out of the game is different when you’re playing Jacks or Better, with a 2-for-1 payoff on two pairs, compared to Double Bonus Poker, with bigger pays on four of a kind but only 1-for-1 on two pairs.