Your Ultimate Guide On How To Play Video Poker

In online casinos, you will find many different types of video poker, including Jacks or Better, Deuces Wild, and Double Bonus Poker. However, they all work pretty much the same way.

Let’s walk through the basic rules of video poker to ensure everything is crystal clear at the very beginning.

When you choose a preferred video poker game and enter it, first, you need to insert your coin value and choose between one to five coins (you do this on the paytable or click the button “bet one” or the button “max coins”) to place your wager.

Once that’s done, the video screen displays five cards, and your goal is to create the best possible poker hand from these cards.

Because it’s a draw game, you have one chance to improve your hand. You can choose to replace anywhere from one to all five cards from your original hand if you wish. If you’re content with your initial cards, you can keep them by pressing those cards.

After selecting your cards, you hit the deal/draw button, and the game will provide you with new cards instead of the ones you discarded. The game will then pay you based on the final hand you end up with, as per the payout schedule shown on the screen.

Naturally, the stronger your poker hand, the larger your payout will be. And once your winnings have been paid, you can start the game again.

A video poker paytable is a table with specific numbers that represent how much each poker hand is valued.

In most games, paytables are the same, but there are still some video poker games that have higher or even lower values for hands. That is why it is important to choose a game with a good paytable.

In order to better understand what is higher or lower value for hands, let’s say you’re comparing two poker paytables. In the first table, a full house pays 9 coins, and a flush pays 6 coins. In the second table, those same hands pay 8 and 5 coins. If you opt for the second game with the 8 and 5 payouts, you’ll deplete your funds more quickly, and your chances of winning will be reduced. So, it’s generally a less favorable choice.

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Typically, the paytable lists the payouts for various hands, such as a pair of jacks, two pairs, three of a kind, a straight, a flush, a full house, four of a kind, a straight flush, and a royal flush. The payout amounts are usually shown for different bet levels, often with separate columns for one, two, three, four, and five coins.

If you want to choose the best paytable there is a general rule, a “full pay” or “9/6” Jacks or Better paytable, where a full house pays 9 coins and a flush pays 6 coins when betting one coin. This is often considered a good paytable to aim for. However, you can always try Deuces Wild or Double Bonus Poker, since they have their own unique paytable.

To determine your potential winnings for a specific hand, you can consult the paytable and match your hand to the corresponding payout based on the number of coins you’ve bet.

Understanding the paytable is crucial for video poker strategy, as it helps you make informed decisions about which cards to hold and which to discard in pursuit of the best possible payout.

Now that you know what a video poker paytable is, we will show you what it looks like.

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As you can see on the leftmost column of the table are names of card hands, from the strongest to the weakest.

Next to the card hand names, you will notice five columns and each of them presents the value of card hands. If you choose a 1 coin bet, then the winnings you gain from those hands will be small, but so will your losses. However, if you choose the 5 coin bet, you will see the maximum payouts, but also have the largest bet size.