Best Las Vegas Video Poker

The best Vegas Video Poker is The Palms because of its consistent offerings of high return machines.   

On the Strip, no major casinos have positive expectation games but Wynn has a reasonable comps program and inventory of near 100% return games.  We also rank it as one of the best overall casinos for large bankroll players. 

Hilton has a very large selection of decent machines near their best-in-Vegas Sports Book.  Venetian also has acceptable machines and a better than average comps program (for the Strip).   

Downtown, Main Street Station and Fremont have some good Video Poker inventory and Main Street Station comps redeem very well.  El Cortez has some 100%+ return games but they are often occupied.

For locals or visitors with a car in the southern part of Vegas, the Silverton (except for its Poker Room and Sports Book) is a uniformly outstanding casino especially strong in Video Poker as well as good value restaurants. 

In the Northwest, Red Rock followed by Suncoast are recommended.  In the Northeast, Cannery has an inventory of 100% plus games and is a very strong overall Local’s casino.

Budget minded players should try the Cannery and Hooter’s.  High rollers have few options but Wynn and Venetian have nice décor.

In addition, we strongly recommend that players who want to play at a very small disadvantage or at a small advantage to the casino purchase Video Poker courses that pay for themselves very easily.  You may find it very surprising how strong a value these courses are.  The Deuces Wild (Full Pay version), and Jacks or Better games are the most useful to learn.     

Years ago, Video Poker players could make a living playing the machines in Vegas.  Today, it is still possible but more difficult.  Usually when one casino adds some 100% plus machines, 2 other casinos downgrade theirs.    

Even when there are good machines to play, the “Burn-Out Artists” and “Fleas” may hog the machines anyway.  A very good reference for Video Poker as a living, as well as an overall gambling guide, is Bob Dancer’s autobiography.  Here are links to that book.  Also, see our analysis, Video Poker for a Living in Las Vegas.    

Keys to successful Video Poker:

• Paytables

• Playing Strategy

• Maximum Coin Play

• Comps
  
  

Some Vegas Video Poker machines have long-term expected returns of over 100%--player has the Edge. 

Here are some Full Pay returns for Vegas casinos:

• Deuces Wild (FPDW)                100.76%

• Joker Poker, Kings or Better     100.65%

• Double Bonus (DB)                   100.17%

• Double Double Bonus (DDB)     100.07%

Unfortunately, good machines look exactly like bad machines.  You can only tell the difference by looking at Paytables.  Jacks or Better of 45/30 for Full House/Flush is exactly the same as 9/6 except that we show the 5 coin maximum which should always be used to get the best payout.
  

Correct Playing Strategy

Most Video Poker players play about 3 full percentage points below perfect play.  Partially this is not always using maximum coin for best odds but mostly it is subtle mistakes.

Each game has a unique optimum strategy.  Games with bonuses or wild card payouts do so by eliminating or reducing payouts for other hands, usually the more frequently hit hands.  Perfect strategy could add about 1.5% to an average player’s return for most games if not more.

You will want to learn multiple games because casinos remove or downgrade high payout machines.  The game that you like may suddenly disappear or become unattractive.

Each game may require hours of practice even if it seems there are not many apparent differences from one game to another.  For example, Jacks or Better (JOB) strategy can be used for 8/5 DB or Double Bonus with a loss of a tenth of a percent (.001) from not using optimum strategy specifically for DB. 

Although it seems that just learning one strategy and playing the same way on all machines might work, there could be big savings (or additional winnings) by learning multiple strategies.

If you play only on weekends, 2 hours a day for 50 weeks in a year as a local in Las Vegas and your playing speed is 400 hands per hour, you will play about 80K hours a year.  At the $0.25 level at max coin of $1.25 per hand (5 coins leads to optimum payout for a Royal) you will put $100,000 through Video Poker machines a year.

By picking up .001%, your decreased loss or increased winnings will be about $100 a year on average.  If you play for 10 years, the Net Present Value (NPV) or today’s value of that future money will be roughly $786 depending on timing of actual gains from perfect strategy (5% discount rate).  If you play 20 years, a .001% increase in your chances could be worth about $1,263 in today’s dollars.

Some of your benefits may be seen right away so you could have hourly gains from optimal play.  On rare hands it may be years before you see a benefit.  As a compromise, Vegas Made Easy.com assumed benefits on a monthly basis.  See Table below.  Some Video Poker writers believe that not playing optimum Expected Value play is justified by the variance of the game.  You can play perfectly and lose steadily or play poorly but win big on a 6/5 Jacks or Better machine.

Even playing well, you luck can run in major streaks.  One player hit 2 Royals and 2 Quad Deuces worth $600,000 in payouts.  This was done within about 48 hours at Caesar’s on a rare 3 coin max $100 Deuces Wild machine—now downgraded.  He had played $100+ Video Poker machines for about 2 years at other casinos without getting a Royal. 

Chance does overwhelm strategy.

However, give yourself the best possible chances by always playing the right strategy.  Over the long term, it will probably mean many thousands of dollars for serious players.  If you have bad luck, you may not lose as much.  If you have good luck, you may win more.      

Of the several good sources for proper strategy, Vegas Made Easy.com recommends Video Poker for Winners (VPW) as our top choice with Frugal Video Poker our second recommendation. Our top picks for books are Bob Dancer's life as a VP pro, Jean Sott's Paytable guide and her book on Video Poker.

VPW                                      http://www.videopokerforwinners.com/
Frugal Video Poker             http://queenofcomps.com/

Hitting the Royal Flush on Video Poker

The Royal Flush will be about 2% of your return.  If you do not hit it, you will probably have a negative return unless you are hitting bonus hands or other big hands. 

A Royal Flush cycle is the number of hands until hitting the Royal which will average about every 40,000 hands or so.  It varies by a few thousand hands game to game because your playing strategy will be less Royal-centric in games with bonus hands and more Royal-centric where you need to go after the Royal.

Below are the odds for getting a Royal.  Each card needed to make a Royal is calculated separately and then multiplied together to get the odds.  This is available as a Google spreadsheet.  Click here for the link. 

Any 10,J,Q,K or A on your first card, gives you a chance at a Royal with odds of 20 out of 52 total cards in the deck.  The next card has to be the same suit so you only have 4 out of 51 chances, etc. and then finally 1 out of 48 cards for the last card.

If all your cards are lower than a 10 and you discard them all, there will only be 47 cards left in the deck.  The odds of drawing a Royal after discarding all 5 dealt cards is 383,484.8 to 1 while it is 47 to 1 if you start with 4 cards to the Royal. 

Odds for a Joker game are also shown.  For example, if you have 2 cards to a Natural Royal (No Jokers or wild cards) the odds are 17,296 to 1 against you making a Natural Royal while the odds are 16,215 to 1 in a 52 card deck. 

53 to 54.  All the other odds will automatically change.

If you have 3 cards to the Royal, drawing for 2 cards, it would seem that 1,081 chances to make that draw (“at bats”) would guarantee hitting a Royal.  The odds are 1,081 to 1 of making this 2 card catch.  Simple arithmetic is misleading.

For any odds of more than about 500 to 1, it will always be about 63.2% to make the hand given the number of “at bats” is the same as the odds.  If you look up the odds of getting a Royal when holding 3 cards, it works out to 1,081 to 1.  At 1,081 attempts while holding 3 to the Royal, the odds of hitting are about 63.2%--not 100%.

For smaller odds such as a 4 card Royal with a 47 to 1 draw, the odds of getting at least one Royal in 47 attempts are slightly higher at 63.6%.   

You will be dealt 2 to a Royal about every 33 hands.  Once you have 2 to the Royal, your odds of getting the other 3 cards is one in 16,215.  For 16,215 at bats, holding 2 Royal cards, you should expect 1 or more Royals 63.2% of the time.

The table also shows how many at bats you need to be 50/50 to get a Royal(s).  For example if you have 4 to the Royal, 33 at bats will put you just over 50% likely to hit at least one. 

If you are playing multiple lines such as 100 hands simultaneously with 4 to the Royal as your starting hand, you have an 88.36% chance.  With 200 tries when you have 4 to the Royal, you are 98.64% likely to be filling out a WG2 with a smile on your face.   

As a rough rule of thumb, you can triple the odds to estimate the 95% likelihood of hitting.  For the 1 out of 47 draw when you have 4 to the Royal, multiply 47 by 3 to get 141 and at 141 attempts you are over 95% likely to hit at least one.  For 2 to the Royal, where the odds are 16,215 against you, multiply by 3 to get 48,645—also over a 95% probability.