Video Poker Basics: Pay Tables, Return & Optimal Play

Video poker is the rare casino machine that shows you its math. The pay table is printed on the screen and the cards come from a virtual 52-card deck, so the long-run return can be calculated exactly: 99.54% for full-pay 9/6 Jacks or Better played perfectly, 97.30% for the common 8/5 version. Your choices decide how close you get.

How a hand works

1. Bet. Choose 1 to 5 coins (credits) per hand.
2. Deal. You get five cards from a freshly shuffled virtual deck.
3. Hold. Keep any cards you like, from none to all five.
4. Draw. The cards you didn't hold are replaced from the same deck.
5. Pay. Your final hand is paid according to the pay table, using standard poker hand rankings.

There's no opponent and no dealer hand. You're simply trying to finish with the best-paying hand you can, and the hold decision is the whole game.

Why video poker isn't a slot

Both machines run on a random number generator. The difference is what that generator drives.

In a slot, it picks reel positions whose weighting you can't see, so the return is hidden from you. In video poker, it shuffles a standard deck: 52 cards, four of each rank, every card equally likely. The deck's composition is known and the pay table is on the glass, so anyone can work out the return.

Each hand starts from a fresh shuffle in standard games, so earlier hands don't matter. A machine that just paid a royal is exactly as likely to deal another one.

Reading a pay table

Here's the standard Jacks or Better pay table. The names "9/6" and "8/5" come from the full house and flush lines, which are the only lines that change.

Two details matter. First, payouts are "for one," not "to one": a pair of jacks returns your bet, so you break even. Second, the royal flush jumps from 250 per coin to 800 per coin at max bet. The published returns assume five coins.

Why one line on the pay table matters so much

Full houses and flushes are common enough that shaving one coin off each moves the return by more than two percentage points: 99.54% versus 97.30%.

In dollars, the 9/6 game costs about $4.60 per $1,000 wagered. The 8/5 game costs about $27.00. Play 1,000 hands at $1.25 (five quarters) and you've wagered $1,250: an expected loss of about $5.75 on 9/6, versus $33.75 on 8/5.

Optimal play: picking the best hold

Each hand offers 32 possible holds, from keeping nothing to keeping everything. Optimal play means choosing the hold with the highest expected value (EV): the average payout over every possible draw.

The examples below use the 9/6 pay table at max coins, with EV expressed per coin bet. An EV of 1.00 means you get your bet back on average. Each figure was calculated by checking every possible draw from the remaining 47 cards.

The pattern: royal draws are worth chasing, a four-card flush beats a low pair, and keeping a kicker with a pair just costs you draws at trips and quads.

The most common costly habits:

• Holding a kicker next to a pair.
• Keeping a lone low card, such as a 9, instead of drawing five fresh ones.
• Breaking a high pair to chase a four-card straight.
• Playing fewer than max coins, which forfeits the royal bonus.

A simplified strategy for 9/6 Jacks or Better

Take the first hold on this list that your hand contains:

1. Pat royal flush, straight flush or four of a kind.
2. Four to a royal flush, even if it means breaking a flush, straight or high pair.
3. Pat full house, flush, straight or three of a kind.
4. Four to a straight flush.
5. Two pair.
6. A high pair: jacks, queens, kings or aces.
7. Three to a royal flush.
8. Four to a flush.
9. A low pair: 2s through 10s.
10. Four to an outside straight (open at both ends).
11. Two suited high cards.

Below that come weaker holds such as three to a straight flush, two unsuited high cards or a single high card. With nothing worth keeping, draw five new cards. A list like this gives up a little compared with computer-perfect play, but it captures the decisions that matter most.

Deuces Wild and the over-100% question

A few pay tables return more than 100% with perfect play. Full-pay Deuces Wild, where every 2 is wild, is the classic example at 100.76%.

Royal flushes illustrate the point. You're dealt one only once in 649,740 hands; optimal draws make them far more frequent than that, but still typically tens of thousands of hands apart. Until one lands, you're playing a game that returns noticeably less than its headline figure. That gap is volatility, the subject of RTP vs. volatility.

The bottom line

Video poker is unusual because you can verify its math: read the pay table, play the highest-EV hold, and a full-pay 9/6 Jacks or Better machine returns 99.54%. Pick an 8/5 machine or play by hunch and the cost multiplies.

It's still a game the house expects to win on almost every machine, so treat the money as an entertainment cost. See house edge explained or the house edge calculator to turn any return percentage into an expected cost.