Video poker is a skill and a guess game. If you want to be successful in video poker, you need to know the rules and pay tables, but keep in mind that rules and pay tables may differ from one machine to the next.
This is one of the most important things you need to remember when looking at Video Poker odds: they are calculated based on millions of hands played, which means winning in the short run isn’t always certain.
Pay table
The pay table is one of the main elements of video poker, as this tells you whether you will hit a flush or straight. It gives you payouts based on the rank of your hands, and can make all the difference between winning and losing. Video poker games are made to contain this list so that you can easily see it and decide which machines to play on.
Video poker pay tables impact their RTP percentage and influence volatility and risk in machines, so you need to know them if you’re interested in having the best chance at beating this casino classic.
You can usually tell if there are full-pay machines by looking at the pay tables. A game that gives 9 credits for a flush and 6 for a full house is usually full pay jacks or better machine.
Chances of a flush or straight.
When playing video poker, the first thing you need to know about the payout structure and how it affects a straight or flush. These odds will help you decide what cards to hold and discard, and how many coins to wager per hand, wisely.
Different hand combinations have different payouts, and these will differ from game to game (two Jacks might bring you a coin and a Royal Flush can bring you six times what you bet) – each of which will affect your total return.
The mathematics of making a flush or a straight might not be complicated, but they’re not practical for humans to make by themselves. 2598,960 possible hands to imagine and evaluate one by one would take too long; computer software produces results much faster than we do.
Betting intervals
Video poker is a very thrilling casino game that fuses the poker strategy and the slot machine system to make an exciting game. The choices of the player directly impact its results, so this is a good game for people who like strategy and calculus. If you follow the right strategies, your house edge will be smaller and your odds higher.
Video poker machines pay outs depending on the rank of the hand and the number of coins bet; each player can wager as much as five coins and the higher the amount bet, the higher the hand pays out.
The house edge of a video poker machine is set by software and will vary from machine to machine. This house edge factored in probabilities for combinations and millions of plays to work out, and it is not a guaranteed long-term payout for players.
Variations
Video poker machines pay out differently for different types of hands without changing their odds of making a royal flush. Rather, these variations influence how much players lose or win fast in the short term. One very popular version, Joker’s Wild, puts in a joker and offers bonus payouts for 4-of-a-kind hands – lowering the house edge while increasing RTP.
Recall that a video poker machine’s RTP is a rough guide, not a guarantee of a high immediate payback. RTP calculation takes millions of hands into account and are more long-term projections than guaranteed payouts.
As obvious as it sounds, video poker slowness is the way to limit hourly losses and master the game. Taking too long will just make it more costly.