Video Poker Strategy
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Video Poker – Strategy
Video Poker is a skill-based game, and remains one of the most popular online casino games due to the fact that it is easy to pick-up and because playing with the correct strategy you can virtually eliminate the house edge. When played proficiently, video poker’s payouts rival any table game or video slot machine. Before we get into strategy there are a few things you need to know:
- Picking the best Video Poker Machine – This is paramount in reducing the house edge. The only two video poker machines you should be playing are Jacks or Better 9/6 or Deuces Wild. Both of these machines offer fantastic payouts that offset the natural house edge – playing an optimal strategy on Jacks or Better can reduce the edge to only 0.5%!
- Playing with full coins – If you will look at the paychart, you might not notice any differences between playing with 1 or 5 coins – payouts increase proportionally, so you might wonder why play with more coins. There are actually two very important reasons to play max coins:
- Royal Flush payouts are much higher when max coins are bet – this will pay out more in the long run and ultimately reduce the house edge
- For Progressive Jackpot Video Poker you need to bet max coins and hit a Royal Flush to win the jackpot.
A Jacks or Better 9/6 Video Poker Machine – the name is derived from the payout of a full house (9:1) and flush (6:1).
Video Poker – Progressive Jackpots
A Video Poker Progressive Jackpot machine works just like a normal video poker machine, but a portion of every dollar wagered on the game gets put into a collective pot available to everyone playing that particular video poker machine. Different video poker machines might have different jackpots available, but for the most part several machines will have a shared jackpot between them. Try shopping around to see which machine offers the best progressive jackpot.
Winning the progressive jackpot entails winning with a natural royal flush. The payout for winning a progressive jackpot can be anywhere from a couple of thousand to over $100,000, so if given the opportunity to win a hand with a Royal Flush on a machine with a big jackpot, it may be worth throwing away an excellent hand for the chance of winning the pot.
Basic Video Poker Strategy
This section will describe the basic strategy you should be following when playing Video Poker, to keep the house edge at a minimum. There are purely optimal strategies that do exist but they are extremely complex and are difficult to recall from memory while playing. Playing with such strategies will reduce the house edge slightly more than our basic strategy, but the difference is not enough to warrant trying to learn such an overly complex strategy. The benefit of our strategy is that the house edge is virtually eliminated, and it is not a difficult strategy to remember and implement into your normal play.
Rule of Thumb
Always hold the below hands:
Royal Flush
Straight Flush
Four of a Kind
Full House
Three of a kind*
Two Pair**
* Throw away the remaining two cards in hopes of hitting a four of a kind or a full house
** Throw away the remaining card in hopes of hitting a full house
If your hand consists of anything other than the above, extenuating circumstances may apply where it is advisable to discard a winning hand to try to hit a better hand. The following hand is a good example:
Although you are holding a straight, you are one card away from a royal flush which has a much higher payout than a straight. Here you should hold the 10, J, K, A, and discard the Q. Upon discarding the queen you have several outs. A queen of hearts will give you the royal flush, any heart will give you a flush, any other queen will give you a straight (again), and a high card will give you a pair.
Aside from the hands mentioned above which you should always hold, we will present the numerical order of hands that you should hold. A hand with a lower numerical value should always be held in favor of a higher one.
- Four Cards to a Royal Flush – As mentioned in the above example, you should always break up a straight, flush, or high pair to fish for the Royal Flush. Keep in mind that 9-K straight flush should be held even though it is four cards to a Royal Flush – as above, always hold a straight flush.
- Flush or Straight
- Four Cards to a Straight Flush
- High Pair
- Three Cards to a Royal Flush
- Four Cards to a Flush
- Low Pair
- Four Cards to a Straight
- Two Cards to a Royal Flush (A, K, Q, or J)
- Three Cards to a Straight Flush
- Three High Cards
- Two High Cards
- Two Cards to a Royal Flush with a 10
- One High Card
- Discard Everything
We’ll use the following example as an explanation of how to use the above list:
Here we have several hand possibilities. We have four cards to a straight (8),a low pair (7), four cards to a flush (6), and four cards to a straight flush (3). Since the lowest hand value is 3, you should discard the 4 of Diamonds and try for the straight flush. This gives you many outs: a 3 or 8 of any suit will give you a straight, any club will give you a flush, and a 3 or 8 of clubs will give you a straight flush.
Developing an optimal strategy in Video Poker involves understanding the odds of hitting each hand, and the payout. While it is worth it to chase certain hands, the above guide outlines the situations in which you want to keep what you have, and the situations where you should discard a hand that pays out to chase a better hand.
Doubling Up
Most Video Poker machines give you chance to “double or nothing” you winnings up to five times, as explained in our Video Poker Rules section. Since doubling up is a 50/50 shot of doubling your winnings, it is really up to you to decide whether or not to use this feature – doubling up is one of the few bets along with the Odds Bet in Craps that carries no house edge and in the long run reduces the overall house edge. Ideally and with and infinite bankroll, the optimal strategy would be to double down as much as the video poker machine will allow you. Realistically, that would still be a mathematically optimal strategy for reducing the house edge, but would also be extremely volatile with a high potential to empty your bankroll quickly.
The Doubling up feature’s volatility stems from the fact that if you do not win this side bet, you will not collect your winnings, and your bankroll will continue to be depleted much faster. While increasing the number of times you double down has a high chance of diminishing your bankroll at a rapid rate, when you do win it will be a great addition to your bankroll. Let’s look at a possible scenario in which your $5 bet gave you a high pair, giving you $5 in winnings:
As you can see, if you successfully double up 5 times with a simple 1:1 payout bet, you can turn that into a 32:1 payout. Of course, the odds of reaching that 32:1 payout entails winning five double up attempts in a row and is only a little over 3%. The most important guideline you should be following when using this feature is to set a limit for yourself before you decide to try your luck doubling down. Knowing when to walk away with your winnings is especially important with doubling down, as it is gets more and more difficult to pull out – the casinos don’t make this easy by always showing you how much more you can win if you attempt to double up once more.
The bottom line – it depends on what kind of player you are. If you are a conservative player that would like to stretch your playing session out as long as possible, then keep doubling up to a maximum of once, and only on smaller payouts, if at all. A player who plays aggressively would do well to utilize the double down feature to their advantage, as it ultimately reduces the house edge.
