Video Poker Games

An Overview of Video Poker

Video poker is easy and comparable to standard poker because you are striving for a hand which will offer the best return. It is based on the game draw poker. In the USA, it is one of the most popular casinos games both online and in Las Vegas. It is played through computer chips, however the program uses a standard deck of 52 cards and your probability of making each possible hand is “reasonable” so far as total hands in x amount of number of hands played. A Fifty-two card deck can produce a total of 2,598,960 hands plus the random number generator inside a video poker machine is programmed to simulate the chances of drawing any of those permutations. The game appeals to players who prefer to make decisions impacting the end result of the game, but who may not enjoy the social element of playing blackjack. Just like table-based poker, it requires a knowledge of important strategies, tricks and tips, so that you can master the game. It is mainly about the cards that you must hold and the cards that you need to discard. There are specific hands that a one should always keep when playing.

Video poker is a very different type of game than slots. It’s a game of skill instead of luck; it’s, in lots of ways, the blackjack of gaming because knowledgeable players of video poker could decrease the house edge to 1% or even less. It can be extremely liberating in this context. You don’t have to wonder if three of a kind is enough to beat other people sitting at the table. Video poker machines with the highest payouts are often called full pay machines.

Video poker normally has a greater payback percentage than most slot machines. It’s also a less risky game than slot machines. Many offer a house edge of less than 1%. Some having 100% or more payback percentage are called positive expectation games, which means you can expect to win over time if you play with a perfect strategy. They can take bets from just a nickel up to a hundred-dollar bill.

A Brief History of Video Poker

Video poker can be described as casino game founded on five-card draw poker. It’s played on a digital console similar to a slot machine.Video poker first started to be viable when it turned out to be cost-effective to mix a monitor with a CPU. The initial models came out concurrently with the first PCs, produced, in 1975. Video Poker began in the US and has become a world-wide phenomenon as it grew beyond the United States.

Video poker became established when SIRCOMA, (Si Redd Coin Machines), which became International Game Technology (IGT), launched Draw Poker in 1980. During the entire Eighties, video poker became more and more popular in many casinos, as people preferred them to table games. Nowadays video poker is featured in countless casinos. The game is favored by Las Vegas residents, who go to casinos away from the Vegas Strip. Most of these casinos usually offer lower minimums and sometimes better odds, even though this was more prevalent in the Nineties as casinos nationwide have recently been reducing their pay tables or only offering quarter machines or more.

The Game of Video Poker

Right after inserting cash in the machine, play starts by placing a wager and pushing the deal button. The player will then be given 5 cards and has the chance to discard a number of them in return for new ones from the same deck. Following the draw, the machine will pay out if the hand played matches the winning combinations, that are posted in the game’s pay table.

Pay tables assign the payouts for hands. They are depending on how uncommon they are, the game variance, and the choice of the game provider. A standard pay table begins with a minimum hand of two jacks, which will pay even money. The rest of the hand combinations in video poker are identical to table poker, including hands like two pair, 3 of a kind, straight, flush, full house, 4 of a kind straight flush and royal flush. Some machines provide progressive jackpots, and other one of a kind bonuses, thereby encouraging players to play more often.

Rules & Regulations

Video poker machines in land-based casinos in the US are governed by state or sometimes Indian gambling institutions. These agencies normally demand that these machines deal only random-card sequences employing a virtual card deck. This is according to a Nevada Gaming Commission law later implemented by other states having a gaming authority. Video poker machines will be tested to ensure conformity with this requirement prior to being accessible to the public. Regrettably, cheating in casinos exists, and there are notorious cases of rigging some video poker machines to defraud the public.

Some venues offer games that seem to be video poker, but are really just facades for random drawings much like a slot machine. These are referred to as “video lottery terminals” and quite often have the words VLT someplace on the video machine face. The outcome of any deal is fixed before the first cards are placed. If you deliberately discard a winning hand, a magician shows up and replaces the losing outcome with a hand that pays off the pre-programmed amount. Because there’s no way to establish the payout of such machines from the pay table, playing these types of machines is not any better than playing a standard slot machine.

Types of Video Poker

There are numerous types of video poker. They consist of Deuces Wild, in which a two functions as a wild card. Joker’s Wild, is where a joker functions as a wild card. There’s pay schedule modification, in which four aces with a 5 or smaller kicker pays a superior amount. Often these types of games usually have an adjective in their title such as “bonus” or “double”, or even “triple”); and finally multi-play poker, in which the player begins with a base hand, and each supplementary played hand draws from a another set of cards with the starting hand. Some Multi-play games can be found in “Triple Play”, “10 Play”, “50 Play” and “100 Play” versions

In games which don’t possess a wild card a player typically will get the rare four-of-a-kind hand roughly once every five-hundred hands, while a player might play thousands of hands before an exceptionally rare royal flush, which often provides the highest payout.

Video poker games on the web are currently available in America in three different states. They are New Jersey, Nevada and Delaware. Players in these states can enjoy regulated internet video poker games on the condition that they’re actually present in the that state, ofl awful age to play and can verify their personal identity.

Full Pay Games

When contemporary video poker games initially made an appearance, the top-paying variant of a specific game was referred to as “Full-Pay”. The Game variants that delivered a lower payback rate were called “Short-Pay”. Although the term Full-Pay continues to be in use, nowadays, there are lots of game variants that pay more. Payback percentage conveys the long term anticipated value of the player’s bet as a percentage when the game is played flawlessly. A payback rate of 99 percent, for instance, suggests that for every $100 gambled, in the long term, the player would be prepared to lose $1 as long as they played every hand perfectly. Some payback percentages in full-pay games in many cases are about or even more than 100%. Full-pay-Jacks-or-Better, for instance, provides a payback percentage as high as 99.54%.

Unfortunately casinos seldom publicize the actual payback percentages, thus leaving it to the player to spot the video poker machines offering the best schedules. The payoff schedules for many video poker machines are set up with a pay schedule which pays proportionally a bit more for certain hands like a Royal Flush whenever the maximum number of credits usually five coins is wagered. Consequently, players who don’t play with the absolute maximum number of credits at any given time are playing with a lesser theoretical return.

Jacks or Better

Jacks or Better, occasionally called “Draw Poker,” is considered the most common type of video poker. Payoffs start at two jacks. Full-pay Jacks or Better also referred to as 9/6 Jacks or Better because the payoff for a full house is Nine times the bet, and also the payoff for a flush is six times the wager.

 

Hand	Prize	Combinations	Probability	Return
Royal Flush	800	41,126,022	0.000025	1.9807%
Straight Flush	50	181,573,608	0.000109	0.5465%
Four of a kind	25	3,924,430,647	0.002363	5.9064%
Full House	9	19,122,956,883	0.011512	10.3610%
Flush	6	18,296,232,180	0.011015	6.6087%
Straight	4	18,653,130,482	0.011229	4.4918%
Three of a kind	3	123,666,922,527	0.074449	22.3346%
Two Pair	2	214,745,513,679	0.129279	25.8558%
Jacks or Better	1	356,447,740,914	0.214585	21.4585%
All Other	0	906,022,916,158	0.545435	0.0000%
Totals	–	1,661,102,543,100	1.000000	99.5439%

Bally’s All American

All American is founded on Jacks or Better only having a greater payout for flushes, as well as straights and straight flushes. However there is a lower payout for full-houses and a couple pairs, (8-8-8-3-1 vs. 9-6-4-3-2). The full-pay original version where quads return 50 bets, where once widespread but currently rare, is among the highest return variations of video poker provided, however the play strategy is extremely complicated and mastered by very few players.

Tens or Better

The game Tens or Better” is a variant of 6/5 Jacks or Better. The minimal paying hand is one pair of tens, as opposed to a pair of Jacks. The Strategy is comparable between the two , despite the completely different full house & flush payouts.

Joker’s Wild

The game of Joker’s Wild, adds a joker to the game. The joker is completely wild and substitutes to create stronger hands. The addition of the wild joker also contributes another winning hand in five-of-a-kind.

Deuces Wild

“Deuces Wild” can be described as a variation of the original video poker by which all twos in the deck are wild. Wild cards can replace any other card, to help make a better poker hand. The payout for a four of a kind makes up approximately a great amount of the payback percentage, and also a four-of-a-kind happens typically roughly every 15 hands. Deuces Wild are available with pay schedules that provide a theoretical yield up to 100.8 percent, when executed with a perfect strategy. This particular full pay variation is available only in Nevada. It’s also available with various other pay schedules which have lower theoretical returns.

Hand	1 credit	2 credits	3 credits	4 credits	5 credits
Natural Royal Flush	300	600	900	1200	4000
Four Deuces	200	400	600	800	1000
Wild Royal Flush	25	50	75	100	125
Five of a Kind	15	30	45	60	75
Straight Flush	9	18	27	36	45
Four of a Kind	5	10	15	20	25
Full House	3	6	9	12	15
Flush	2	4	6	8	10
Straight	2	4	6	8	10
Three of a Kind	1	2	3	4	5
Theoretical Return	99.7%	99.7%	99.7%	99.7%	100.8%

Bonus Poker

“Bonus Poker” is based upon Jacks- or-Better, but Bonus Poker provides a greater payout percentage for a four-of-a-kind. The full-pay variation of this game returns as high as 99.2%. The game has numerous versions featuring various bonus payouts depending on the ranking of the four-of-a-kind.

Double Bonus

“Double Bonus” is a variant of Jacks or Better having a bonus payout for having four aces. This variation provides up to a theoretical yield of 100.2%, when played with a flawless strategy – however, this percentage is only on a “10/7” variation of the video poker game. With 10/7 being the actual payouts for having a full house or flush. There are lots of other video poker models of 10/6, 9/6, and so on, that have somewhat lower than the most lucrative10/7 game version payout. Even though the full-pay version features a theoretically-positive return, very few play good enough to take advantage of it. Double Bonus is a complicated game.

Additionally it is offered with various other pay schedules which have smaller theoretical returns:

Hand	1 credit	2 credits	3 credits	4 credits	5 credits
Royal Flush	250	500	750	1000	4000
Straight Flush	50	100	150	200	250
Four Aces	160	320	480	640	800
Four 2, 3, or 4	80	160	240	320	400
Four 5-K	50	100	150	200	250
Full House	10	20	30	40	50
Flush	7	14	21	28	35
Straight	5	10	15	20	25
Three of a Kind	3	6	9	12	15
Two Pair	1	2	3	4	5
Jacks or Better	1	2	3	4	5
Theoretical Return	99.1%	99.1%	99.1%	99.1%	100.2%

Double Double Bonus

The game “Double Double Bonus” is a variant of Jacks or Better that provides bonus payoffs for various four of a kinds, as displayed in the payout table down below. Full pay Double Double Bonus are available with pay schedules that provide up to and including a theoretical return of 100.1%, when played with flawless strategy. It’s also offered with other pay schedules which have lower theoretical returns:

 

Hand	1 credit	2 credits	3 credits	4 credits	5 credits
Royal Flush	250	500	750	1000	4000
Straight Flush	50	100	150	200	250
Four Aces w/2, 3, or 4	400	800	1200	1600	2000
Four 2, 3, or 4 w/A-4	160	320	480	640	800
Four Aces	160	320	480	640	800
Four 2, 3, or 4	80	160	240	320	400
Four 5-K	50	100	150	200	250
Full House	10	20	30	40	50
Flush	6	12	18	24	30
Straight	4	8	12	16	20
Three of a Kind	3	6	9	12	15
Two Pair	1	2	3	4	5
Jacks or Better	1	2	3	4	5
Theoretical Return	98.9%	98.9%	98.9%	98.9%	100.1%

Low-Pay Video Poker Games

Frequently casinos opt for pay tables that lessen the maximum payout percentage in comparison with other generally available game variations. This boosts the house edge, but usually reduces net revenue to the casino as players have less playing time on the video poker machine, busting out of their buying earlier. Casinos that decrease pay tables usually have to boost promotions to attract customers.

9/5 Jacks or Better

9/5 Jacks or Better is really a low-pay form of the game. The payout for having a Flush is trimmed from 6 times your wager to 5 times your wager, but other payouts stay the same. This decreases the maximum payout to 98.5% for players gambling five coins per hand to get a Royal Flush bonus.

8/6 Jacks or Better

8/6 Jacks or Better is yet another often-used pay table for Jacks or Better video poker games. The payout for a Full House is reduced from 9 times your bet to 8 times your bet, while all the other payouts stay the same as in a full-pay game. This decreases the highest possible payout percentage to 98.4% for players wagering five coins per hand to get a Royal Flush bonus.

8/5 Jacks or Better

8/5 Jacks or Better decreases the Full House payout from 9 times your bet to 8 times your wager, and also reduces the Flush payout from 6 times your wager to 5x your wager. All the other payouts stay the same as in a full pay game. This decreases the highest possible payout percentage to 97.3% for players gambling five coins per hand to obtain the Royal Flush bonus.

7/5 Jacks or Better

7/5 Jacks or Better reduces the Full House payout from 9 times your wager to 7 times your wager, and in addition reduces the Flush payout from 6 times your wager to 5 times your wager. Other payouts continue to be the same as in the full pay game. This decreases the maximum payout percentage to 96.2% for players gambling five coins per hand to get a Royal Flush bonus.

6/5 Jacks or Better

6/5 Jacks or Better slashes the Full House payout from 9 times your guess to 6 times your wager, and as well reduces the Flush payout from 6 times your wager to 5 times your wager. All the other payouts stay the same as in a full pay game. This cuts down on the maximum payout percentage to 95.0% for players gambling five coins per hand to get a Royal Flush bonus.

Progressive Jackpot Games

Other forms of video poker only possess positive theoretical returns whenever the progressive jackpot has become high enough. Quite a few establishments publicize with a billboard whenever the progressive jackpot is extremely high.

Conclusion

A game which originally began with the Fortune Coin Company sometime in the mid 1970’s in Reno Las Vegas in the United States now has many variations and can be enjoyed by all players as a game involving both luck and skill.