Video poker

Video poker prints its own odds. The cards come from a 52-card deck shuffled before every hand, the player chooses which of the five dealt cards to "hold" and which to "draw" again, and the "pay table" on the screen says what each final hand pays; from those three facts the return of the game can be computed exactly, and it depends above all on two numbers in the table.

We have computed it ourselves for all 2,598,960 deals and the 32 ways of holding each, and the results agree with the published analyses down to the sixth decimal. The player in our examples bets five coins of 20 cents, $1 a hand, and plays 600 hands an hour (our assumption, not a measured speed), so that $600 is in play each hour.

The two numbers that matter

In "Jacks or Better", the base game, the table pays per coin 1 for a pair of jacks or higher, 2 for two pair, 3 for three of a kind, 4 for a straight, 25 for four of a kind and 50 for a straight flush. These lines stay the same in every version compared below (so does the royal flush, at 4,000 coins for five).

What changes is the full house and the flush, and the shorthand "9/6" means a full house paid 9 and a flush paid 6. A full house comes about once in 87 hands and a flush once in 91, so each coin taken from either line costs just over one point of return.

The full table, "9/6", returns 99.54 per cent with optimal strategy, "8/5" returns 97.30 and "6/5" returns 95.00, so that for our player the first costs $2.74 an hour and the last $30.02!

Jacks or Better pay tables (other lines identical; royal flush 4,000 for five coins)

Pay table	Full house	Flush	Return with optimal strategy	House edge
9/6	9	6	99.54%	0.46%
9/5	9	5	98.45%	1.55%
8/6	8	6	98.39%	1.61%
8/5	8	5	97.30%	2.70%
7/5	7	5	96.15%	3.85%
6/5	6	5	95.00%	5.00%

We would treat those two numbers as the price tag of the machine, since the design and the theme of the screen (the part that draws the eye) change nothing in the return. The reduced versions are known as "short pay" tables, and the name of the game says nothing about which one is installed.

Reading a pay table in ten seconds

The first glance goes to the full house and the flush in the one-coin column (the first column of figures), which identify the version; the second goes to the "royal flush", which in the standard table pays 250 per coin for one to four coins and 4,000 for five. Played with a single coin, the same 9/6 machine returns 98.37 per cent in our calculation, because the royal loses most of its weight.

In "Deuces Wild", where the four twos are wild, the first line to read is four of a kind. The "full pay" version pays 5 for it and returns 100.76 per cent, while the version that the Wizard of Odds lists for the old Microgaming software pays 4 (with 16 for five of a kind and 13 for a straight flush) and returns 96.77 per cent in our calculation, so the larger numbers higher up do not make up for one coin less on a hand that comes once in fifteen.

Optimal strategy and the price of a habit

Each deal can be held in 32 ways, from keeping all five cards to drawing five new ones, and "optimal strategy" is the hold with the highest expected return for every possible deal. Its cost is time rather than money, because the rules fit on a strategy table and a player who follows it pays only the edge that the pay table sets.

Small habits cost more than they appear to. With a pair of jacks and an ace, keeping the ace as a "kicker" (an extra high card held beside a pair) lowers the value of the hand from 1.54 to 1.42 coins per coin bet. A player who does it with every high pair turns a 9/6 machine into one of 98.58 per cent (close to a 9/5 table).

If you hold a kicker with every pair, low pairs included, the same machine falls to 95.46 per cent, lower than a 7/5 table! The opposite error is just as real: with a jack, queen, king and ace of one suit and a second jack, the pair is worth 1.54 coins and the "four to a royal" (the four suited cards, drawing one) 18.53, so a player who keeps the pair because it already pays gives away about seventeen times the bet on that hand.

The royal flush and the small wins

With optimal strategy a royal flush comes once in 40,391 hands, and at five coins of 20 cents it pays our player $800 (4,000 coins); at 600 hands an hour that is one royal in about 67 hours of play (an average, not a promise about any particular hour). Its share of the return is 1.98 points, so that between royals the 9/6 machine returns about 97.6 per cent.

Most of the return arrives in small amounts. Almost one hand in two pays something (a "hit frequency" of 45.5 per cent), and a pair of jacks or better only returns the stake. The three most frequent paying hands (jacks or better, two pair and three of a kind) supply 70 per cent of the whole return, which is why the game feels steady between the rare large hands.

Where the 99.54 per cent of 9/6 Jacks or Better comes from (optimal strategy, five coins)

Final hand	Pays per coin	Comes once in	Points of return
Royal flush	800	40,391 hands	1.98
Straight flush	50	9,148 hands	0.55
Four of a kind	25	423 hands	5.91
Full house	9	87 hands	10.36
Flush	6	91 hands	6.61
Straight	4	89 hands	4.49
Three of a kind	3	13.4 hands	22.33
Two pair	2	7.7 hands	25.86
Jacks or better	1	4.7 hands	21.46

Deuces Wild, above 100 per cent on paper

Full-pay Deuces Wild returns 100.76 per cent to a player whose every hold is the right one, which means that such a player would take money from the machine (over a very long run). Its strategy differs from that of Jacks or Better (the number of deuces held decides most of it), and the margin of 0.76 points is smaller than the cost of a single bad habit of the kind described above.

We would not assume that a game called Deuces Wild is the full-pay version, since the same name covers tables returning from 100.76 to below 97 per cent. The "Not So Ugly Ducks" table (16 for five of a kind, 10 for a straight flush, 4 for four of a kind) returns 99.73 per cent and "Illinois Deuces" (15, 9 and 4 on the same lines) 98.91, both paying a coin more on the full house and the flush.

A casino that offered full pay to every player would be relying on most of them playing it imperfectly, which is a good reason to look for the 5 on four of a kind before sitting down.

Video poker beside the slots

A slot states a return to player (its "RTP", a figure that the provider declares) which nobody can check from the screen, because the weights of the reels are not shown; video poker puts the whole calculation in front of the player. Our pages on online slots and on RTP and volatility explain what the slot figure means.

In our view video poker is the machine for a player who likes to know the price before paying it, since a 9/6 Jacks or Better played well costs less than half a per cent of the money staked (0.46 per cent), a figure that our house edge page compares with every other game. If you see 8/5 or 6/5 on the screen, the same session simply costs more, and the choice is yours.

Questions

By the Rand Casinos editorial team · Last updated October 2026 · Online since 2007