How to Play Video Poker

Five Main Factors:

1. Find best Paytable.

2. Make sure buttons aren’t sticky.

3. Insert Player’s Card or get one if you don’t have it already.

4. Bet maximum coins—almost always 5. For very High Limit, find casino host to monitor for W2G processing.

5. Play Optimum Video Poker strategy for your specific game.

Net Present Value or the value in today’s dollars for optimal play is surprisingly large for a Video Poker player over some numbers of years.

Although we show a simplified version of FPDW so you can get a rough idea of what strategy play looks like, we strongly recommend the full blown, accurate strategy from Bob Dancer first, or Jean Scott, a close second.

Finding Paytables

Video Poker machines do not carry labels that say, “I’m Full Pay but the one next to me is a huge, honking rip-off and someone barfed over its Hold Card buttons.”

In the lower left hand of the touchscreen, press the button to bring up the paytable. Payouts are listed from high to low. There will be 5 (rarely 3) paytables depending on coins played. The leftmost column for single coin payouts will identify the machine. There are many different games and variations within those games.

Here are some quick rules of thumb for a few games. For Deuces Wild, the big difference for Full Pay Deuces Wild (FPDW) is the 5 to 1 payoff for a 4 of a kind—not 4 to 1. Also, FPDW pays 25 to 1 for a Wild Royal and 15 for a 5 of a kind—lesser versions of Deuces Wild pay 20 and 12.

The key hands to focus on are in bold so for Jacks or Better look at the Full House and Flush payouts. For Loose Deuces check the 5 of a Kind and Straight Flush payouts, etc. Lower numbers mean a worse game so 8/5 JOB is not as good as 9/6 JOB and 6/5 JOB is much worse.

Deuces Wild (Full Pay) 100.76%: