Video Poker for Winners – How to be a Winning VP Player

Everybody who gambles wants to be a winner, but the cold reality of this
industry ensures that the vast majority will fail in their quest.

Choosing to play a skill based game like video poker is a great start toward
avoiding that fate, as the game provides players with some of the most favorable
odds on the casino floor.

Even so, almost all video poker setups are designed to ensure the house holds
an edge – so you’ll be facing an uphill climb if you hope to win consistently.

Climbers have always managed to reach the summit, however, and video poker
success is no exception. Between veteran professionals who grind out seven
figure incomes on the old Game King machines, to serious players who simply
enjoy beating the casino at its own game – the video poker landscape is littered
with steady winners.

They might make it look easy, but we’re here to tell you that’s far from the
truth.

Sustained success at video poker requires a certain level of study, hard
work, and commitment – just like any other human endeavor. We’ve put in a few
decades’ worth of work in this game, and as we get older, we’d like to offer up
our basic roadmap to learning this beautiful game of ours.

Below you’ll find four steps that, when put together by an intelligent and
industrious player, will improve your video poker game. We’re not going to
guarantee a profit or anything foolish like that, because we know just how
difficult video poker can be for beginners to master.

But we will guarantee that you’ll finish this page knowing a fair shot more
about the game, and beating it, than you did before.

Study (and Master) Basic Strategy

You’ll never excel at video poker until you learn basic strategy… end of
story, full stop.

Sure, you may have experienced a winning session or two in the past without
the benefit of basic strategy knowledge – video poker is still gambling after
all.

But the one element that separates skill based gambling games from the random
chaos of pure chance is strategy. By applying personal decision making to the
game play, video poker players exert influence over the final results.

Luck still reigns supreme in the short term, don’t get us wrong there. You
can make the correct play three times in a row, and wind up dropping all three
hands to the house. Once again, that’s just how gambling games go.

But when you expand that sample to 300 hands, or 3,000 hands, the impact of
proper strategy crystallizes into clear view. Players who apply the rules of
basic strategy invariably win more hands – while deriving more profit from those
wins – than those who adhere to instinct alone.

Blackjack players have known the power of applying perfect strategy since the
1960s, when a
group of young mathematicians “solved” the game by finding the
optimal decision for any possible scenario. Throw any two hole cards versus any
dealer up card at a blackjack sharp who knows their basic, and they’ll instantly
make the most profitable play available to them.

When the wizards of the gambling world discovered video poker a few decades
back, the same analytical muscle was soon applied to the 52 card deck. Given the
partial information provided by five dealt cards, and the probabilities inherent
to drawing from the 47 cards left over, the math majors discovered that one play
always provides the best possible odds.

That play may hit or miss on any given hand, but over the course of the
infinite long run that all gamblers must consider, the optimal play provides the
highest expected return available at the moment.

Thankfully, we can use the invaluable Video Poker Trainer Calculator tool
on videopokertrainer.org to see exactly where each play stands from a probability perspective. This
calculator lets you plug in exact five card starting hands – for several video
poker variants in addition to Jacks or Better – before spitting back the
expected return for every possible play.

We invite you to try things out for yourself, and when you do, the calculator
will reveal that holding the four card flush draw offers an expected value of
6.064 coins. That’s a bit better than the 4.118 coins you’d expect to earn by
holding the pair of deuces – making the flush draw the optimal play in this
particularly tricky scenario.

Identifying the proper play in borderline situations is what basic strategy
is all about, and without it, you’ll be flying blind in an uphill battle against
probability.

Basic strategy charts are available for every video poker variant under the
sun, but you can review the proper plays* for Jacks or Better in the table
below:

JACKS OR BETTER BASIC STRATEGY CHART

Rank	Pre Draw Hands	Optimal Decision
1	Four of a kind, straight flush, royal flush	Hold pat hand
2	Four cards to a royal flush	Draw one card
3	Three of a kind, straight, flush, full house	Hold pat hand
4	Four cards to a straight flush	Draw one card
5	Two pair	Draw one card
6	One high pair (jacks or better)	Draw three cards
7	Three cards to a royal flush	Draw two cards
8	Four cards to a flush	Draw one card
9	One low pair (tens or lower)	Draw three cards
10	Four cards to open ended straight	Draw one card
11	Two suited high cards (jack or higher)	Draw three cards
12	Three cards to a straight flush	Draw two cards
13	Two unsuited high cards (With three unsuited high cards, hold lowest two)	Draw three cards
14	Suited J 10, Q 10, or K 10	Draw three cards
15	One high card	Draw four cards
16	Five unconnected low cards	Draw five cards

Now that you know the lay of the land when it comes to basic strategy, head
to the Video Poker Trainer homepage (www.videopokertrainer.org)
and challenge yourself to put study into practice.

The site’s trainer tool provides a free to play version of several popular
variants – Jacks or Better, Aces and Eights, Bonus Poker, Double Bonus Poker,
All American Poker, and Joker Poker – so you can try basic strategy out for
yourself.

Try the “Random Mode” first to test your skills against a truly random
deployment of five card hands.

After you’ve made your decision, the trainer will let you know if the play
was correct or not. To conclude each hand, the trainer tells you what the
correct play really was, while comparing the expected return rates both plays.

Once you’re capable of knocking out extended strings of consecutive correct
plays, up the ante by moving to Random Mode.

This steps things up by dealing out pre programmed “puzzle” hands, or common
borderline decisions like the pair versus flush draw example we used above. When
you’re breezing through these tough spots with ease, you’ll be fully prepared to
bring your bankroll to the real casino for some video poker action – as your
basic strategy apprenticeship will be complete.

Shoot for the Best Odds by Always Max Betting

One of the most oft delivered items of advice given from one video poker
player to another is about as simple as it gets: always bet the maximum.

But as simple as that guidance sounds, many players refuse to abide by the
max betting rule, sticking with one, two, three, or four coins at their
preferred stakes rather than five.

In the ultimate form of gambling irony, by attempting to protect themselves
from larger losses, these risk averse players are actually sacrificing
significant amounts of equity back to the house.

The most common reason offered by players who follow the max betting maxim,
but don’t quite understand how it works, is that betting more gives you a chance
to win more. Upon hearing this justification, video poker fans who understand
proportionality usually scoff, because the payouts for various poker hands
increase incrementally across the board.

That would be the case, but as anybody who has ever killed time sitting at a
video poker machine can tell you, the incremental payout pattern ends when you
hit the game’s top hand.

We’ve just spat some long words your way, so let’s take a look at a visual to
hammer home the importance of max betting.

Below you’ll find the standard 9 / 6 “full pay” table (more on this in the
next section) used on Jacks or Better machines:

JACKS OR BETTER (FULL PAY)

Full Pay 9 / 6	1 Coin	2 Coins	3 Coins	4 Coins	5 Coins
Royal Flush	250	500	750	1000	4000
Straight Flush	50	100	150	200	250
Four of a Kind	25	50	75	100	125
Full House	9	18	27	36	45
Flush	6	12	18	24	30
Straight	4	8	12	16	20
Three of a Kind	3	6	9	12	15
Two Pair	2	4	6	8	10
Jacks or Better	1	2	3	4	5
Return %	98.37%	98.37%	98.37%	98.37%	99.54%

This pay table should look familiar to anyone who has sat themselves down at
a Game King machine, as the same numbers can be seen shining brightly in yellow
outlined boxes from every machine not in use.

The left most column lists the poker hand ladder players are hoping to climb,
moving from one pair of Jacks or Better at the bottom to the royal flush at the
top. From left to right across the rows, you’ll find the basic array of coin
denominations from 1 through 5.

Within the table itself are the actual payouts for making each hand at a
given coin denomination. One coin (per coin bet) for making one pair, two coins
for two pair, three for three of a kind, and so on up the ladder until you reach
the 250 coin payout for a royal flush.

As you move from left to right, going from one coin bets to four coin bets,
you’ll notice that the payouts always increase according to the same pattern.
Payouts for one pair move from 1 > 2 > 3 > 4, for example, while the pays for a
straight flush run from 50 > 100 > 150 > 200.

But when we move up to the royal flush, that 250 > 500 > 750 > 1,000 pattern
comes to an abrupt end. By betting the maximum of five coins per hand, you’ll
turn what should be a payout of 1,250 – according to the established pattern
anyway – into a jackpot pay worth 4,000 coins.

Instinct alone should tell you that playing for this jacked up jackpot pay is
incentive alone to follow the max betting rule – but the math backs it up too.

Check out that bottom row displaying the expected return* rate for each pay
scheme.

For the first four columns, or when betting 1 4 coins, the expected return
for 9 / 6 full pay Jacks or Better stands at 98.37 percent (good for a 1.63
percent house edge).

But when you’re max betting at five coins per hand, the expected return
climbs to 99.54 percent (while the house edge drops to just 0.46 percent).

Clearly then, you’ll enjoy far better odds on your money over the long run by
betting the max.

And that’s max betting bonus isn’t limited to Jacks or Better only, as almost
every video poker variant under the sun relies on the same pay structure to
incentivize max betting.

Telling players to bet above their heads should never be the goal of a
gambling resource, and we take that quite seriously, so please don’t take the
max betting rule too far. If you’ve been playing the $1 machines for $2 or $3
per hand, but don’t quite feel comfortable bumping the bet up to $5, simply move
down to the quarter machines.

You can max bet at the quarter stakes for $1.25 and enjoy the improved
expected return, while still keeping your betting amount at nearly the same
level. And with a little hard work, that increased equity of 1.17 percent
expected return should have you building bankroll for $5 bets in no time.

Shop for the Best Games You Can Find

Spend any amount of time talking to video poker enthusiasts, and the phrase
that seems to pop up more often than most is “full pay.”

For the video poker grinder, full pay machines are highly sought prizes, and
savvy players spend nearly as much time scouring the floor for them as they do
playing hands.

For any given video poker variant, you’ll encounter several slightly
different versions of the basic pay table. As the name suggests, a full pay
machine is one which uses the best possible pay table.

In this case, “best” isn’t always defined by the highest dollar amounts, but
the combined expected return offered by a particular payout arrangement.

To help beginners get a better grasp of this concept, let’s take another look
at the full pay version of Jacks or Better – the game most players start out
with:

JACKS OR BETTER (FULL PAY)

Full Pay 9 / 6	1 Coin	2 Coins	3 Coins	4 Coins	5 Coins
Royal Flush	250	500	750	1000	4000
Straight Flush	50	100	150	200	250
Four of a Kind	25	50	75	100	125
Full House	9	18	27	36	45
Flush	6	12	18	24	30
Straight	4	8	12	16	20
Three of a Kind	3	6	9	12	15
Two Pair	2	4	6	8	10
Jacks or Better	1	2	3	4	5
Return %	98.37%	98.37%	98.37%	98.37%	99.54%

We covered the payouts in the previous section, so this time just focus on
the bottom row of the table, where the expected return rate offered to players
using various coin denominations can be found.

You know by now that the max bet tier always offers a higher expected return
than 1 4 coin wagers, as that 99.54 percent mark is among the best you’ll find
on the casino floor.

It’s so good, in fact, that the casinos have conspired with video poker
machine designers to bring it down to size.

By slightly adjusting the payout amounts found on a full pay table –
downgrading a flush from a 6 coin pay to 5 coins for example – casinos
discovered a way to severely swing expected return rates back in their favor.

Even when all other pay amounts are left intact, that new “9/5” pay table
offers a drastically lower expected return of 98.44 percent. That’s still
reasonable, all things considered, but it’s also a full 1.10 percent lower than
the full pay alternative.

As you’ll come to learn over the course of your video poker journey, shaving
a full percentage point or more off one’s expected return is a recipe for
bankroll disaster.

The worst part of all this is how close the inferior pay tables look when
compared to the 9 / 6 full pay standard. For recreational players just passing
by, a 9/5 machine looks identical in every way to the 9 / 6 version, despite the
fact that it offers significantly reduced odds. Other twists to the payouts for
a full house have also been worked in, further muddying the waters for video
poker players looking for the best games.

We’ve compiled the grid below to highlight several commonly found downgraded
pay tables for Jacks or Better, and you can use the #/# heading atop each column
to see the respective payouts* for a full house and a flush.

*All payout figures assume player is max betting.

JACKS OR BETTER (ALTERNATIVES)

Pay Table	9/5	8/6	8/5	7/5	6/5
Royal Flush	800	800	800	800	800
Straight Flush	50	50	50	50	50
Four of a Kind	25	25	25	25	25
Full House	9	8	8	7	6
Flush	5	6	5	5	5
Straight	4	4	4	4	4
Three of a Kind	3	3	3	3	3
Two Pair	2	2	2	2	2
Jacks or Better	1	1	1	1	1
Return %	98.44%	98.39%	97.29%	96.14%	94.99%

Moving from left to right across the table, we can see that the expected
return rate drops precipitously from 99.54 percent on a 9 / 6 full pay game. An
8 / 6 pay table, which pays 8 coins for a full house and 6 coins for a flush,
offers a 98.39 percent expected return – down 1.15 percent.

By the time you reach the absurdly awful 6 / 5 table, the once promising game
of Jacks or Better becomes a money pit on par with double zero “American”
roulette. The wheel spinning game of chance offers a 94.74 percent expected
return, which is only slightly lower than the 94.99 percent mark found on 6 / 5
machines.

DOUBLE BONUS (FULL PAY)

Full Pay 10 / 7 / 5	1 Coin	2 Coins	3 Coins	4 Coins	5 Coins
Royal Flush	250	500	750	1000	4000
Straight Flush	50	100	150	200	250
Four Aces	160	320	480	640	800
Four 2s, 3s, or 4s	80	160	240	320	400
Four 5s thruFour Ks	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	6
Return %	99.10%	99.10%	99.10%	99.10%	100.17%

DOUBLE BONUS (ALTERNATIVES)

Other Double Bonus Pay Tables	9/7/5	9/6/5	9/7/4	9/6/4	9/5/4
Royal Flush	800	800	800	800	800
Straight Flush	50	50	50	50	50
Four Aces	160	160	160	160	160
Four 2 4	80	80	80	80	80
Four 5 K	50	50	50	50	50
Full House	9	9	9	9	9
Flush	7	6	7	6	5
Straight	5	5	4	4	4
Three of a Kind	3	3	3	3	3
Two Pair	99.10%	97.80%	97.74%	96.37%	95.27%

BONUS POKER (COMMON PAY TABLES)

Other Bonus Poker Pay Tables	8 / 5 / 4 (Full Pay)	30 / 30 / 30	7/5/4	6/5/4	10/8/5
Royal Flush	800	800	800	800	800
Straight Flush	50	50	50	50	50
Four Aces	80	30	80	80	80
Four 2 4	40	30	40	40	40
Four 5 K	25	30	25	25	25
Full House	8	8	7	6	10
Flush	5	5	5	5	8
Straight	4	4	4	4	5
Three of a Kind	3	3	3	3	3
Two Pair	99.17%	98.48%	98.01%	96.87%	94.18%

DEUCES WILD (FULL PAY)

Full Pay 15 / 9 / 5 / 3	1 Coin	2 Coins	3 Coins	4 Coins	5 Coins
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 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	99.67%	99.67%	99.67%	99.67%	100.76%

DEUCES WILD (ALTERNATIVES)

Pay Table	15 / 11 / 4 / 4	16 / 9 / 4 / 4	20 / 12	15 / 9 / 4 / 4	20 / 15 / 9 / 4 / 4
Natural Royal Flush	800	800	800	800	800
Four Deuces	200	200	200	200	200
Wild Royal Flush	25	25	20	25	20
Five of Kind	15	16	12	15	15
Straight Flush	11	9	9	9	9
Four of a Kind	4	4	5	4	4
Full House	4	4	3	4	4
Flush	3	3	2	3	3
Straight	2	2	2	2	2
Three of a Kind	1	1	1	1	1
Return %	99.96%	99.67%	98.94%	98.92%	97.97%

ACES & EIGHTS (FULL PAY)

Full Pay 25 / 8 / 5	1 Coin	2 Coins	3 Coins	4 Coins	5 Coins
Royal Flush	250	500	750	1000	4000
Straight Flush	50	100	150	200	250
Four Aces or Eights	80	160	240	320	400
Four Sevens	50	100	150	200	250
Four Other	25	50	75	100	125
Full House	8	16	24	32	40
Flush	5	10	15	20	25
Straight	4	8	12	16	20
Three of a Kind	3	6	9	12	15
Two Pair	2	4	6	8	10
Jacks or Better	98.54%	98.54%	98.54%	98.54%	99.78%

ACES & EIGHTS (ALTERNATIVES)

Pay Table	70 / 70	25 / 7 / 5	20 / 7 / 5	25 / 6 / 5	20 / 6 / 5
Royal Flush	800	800	800	800	800
Straight Flush	70	50	50	50	50
Four Aces or Eights	70	80	80	80	80
Four Sevens	50	50	50	50	50
All Other Four of a Kinds	20	25	20	25	20
Full House	8	7	7	6	6
Flush	5	5	5	5	5
Straight	4	4	4	4	4
Three of a Kind	3	3	3	3	3
Two Pair	2	2	2	2	2
Jacks or Better	98.72%	98.63%	97.72%	97.48%	96.57%

Clearly, as the data above reveals, sharp players stand to benefit immensely
when they consciously seek out full pay machines.

Unfortunately, the casino landscape is in a constant state of flux, and
operators are increasingly unwilling to spread these advantageous full pay
machines. This is especially true for games like Deuces Wild, which can offer a
positive expectation bet at the full pay level, as casinos aren’t in the
business of playing on a level field.

We’ve got you covered though, thanks to the diligent work put in by the folks
over at vpFREE2. This
invaluable video poker resource includes several useful
tools of the trade, but by far the most effective from a bottom line standpoint
is the site’s Search function.

By inputting detailed search parameters – your preferred video poker variant,
coin denomination, and regional location – the vpFREE2 search tool instantly
calls up a full listing of all machines in your area.

That’s how we know Las Vegas is home to exactly 70 of the coveted 9 / 6 full
pay Jacks or Better machines ranging from quarter to dollar stakes.

The search results even include custom reports generated by actual players.

Say you’re visiting The Strip – a virtual desert for full pay machines –
you’ll learn exactly how to find the nearest full pay games. Those happen to be
located at the Gold Coast casino, and by following the advice of a fellow video
poker fan, you’ll know exactly where to go:

You can also take advantage of vpFREE2’s casino specific search function,
which lays out a list of every video poker machine housed within your casino of
choice. This tool is the best way to map out your trip ahead of time, as you’ll
know exactly where to find the highest paying games in any venue in town.

And these searches aren’t limited to Las Vegas or Nevada only, so feel free
to scan through the West, East, and Gulf Coast listings, along with the entirety
of North America.

You’ll find many video poker sources that simply say “find the full pay
games,” without actually steering you in the right direction. We really want our
readers to take their game to the next level, which is why we’ve linked you up
with vpFREE2 and its world class video poker database.

Never again will you wonder where the full pay games have been hidden away,
and settling for inferior pay tables will become a thing of the past.

Scoop Up Comps and Free Play

We can’t stress this enough, but as an aspiring video poker player, you
should be signing up for every Players Club program you can find.

As soon as you enter a new casino for the first time, make the Players Club
registration desk your first destination. Signing up for a Players Card, or
whatever promotion your casino has in place, is the only way to ensure that your
video poker sessions will be tracked.

Consider the gold standard for Players Club promotions in the industry: Total
Rewards by Caesars Entertainment and M Life Rewards by MGM Resorts.

These programs link dozens of casinos across their respective nationwide
and/global networks, so members can move freely from one venue to another while
keeping their rewards balances intact. So called “comp” points are awarded based
on frequency and regularity of casino play, and they can be redeemed for a whole
host of goodies – including as cash within the casino’s retail shops, as credit
for free play on the machines, or even toward lodging expenses and on site
attractions.

Under the Total Rewards and M Life Rewards programs – which collectively
cover most of The Strip and dozens of casinos across the country – video poker
players earn 1 comp point for every $10 wagered.

Score a 100 comp points and you’ll be credited with $1 in redeemable cash,
not to mention the additional offers that come with being a regularly tracked
video poker player. Most veterans of the game can parlay their various Players
Club memberships into free trips, nights out on the town, buffet dinners, and
lucrative free play offers.

Free play is always a nice treat, as the casino simply ships you a voucher or
loads your Players Card with credit, allowing you to put in the first few dozen
spins without spending a single cent. Any wins you generate over that time are
yours to keep of course, and even if you don’t finish in the black, free play
sessions are the perfect place to practice.

Over the duration of your video poker career, comps and free play can work as
a perpetual source of rebates, offsetting impact of a losing session by cutting
expenses across the trip. These rebates can easily reach into the tens of
thousands, especially considering the high cost of room and board at a Las Vegas
megaresort casino property.

When the venue is essentially paying your way there, feeding you well, and
sending you to the latest shows, playing video poker becomes even more pleasure
than it already was.

Conclusion

Winning at video poker is best viewed like a building plan, and that’s
fitting as you’ll be attempting to build an ever bigger bankroll over time.

First and foremost, the foundation of this plan must be studying basic
strategy. Until you know how to play your cards correctly with consistency, your
game will suffer severe leaks that can reoccur hundreds of times per session.

Next, arm yourself with the most effective tools by deploying the maximum bet
every time out. Max bets hold the key to a video poker machine’s highest
possible payout, and in turn, the best expected return you can find.

From there, you must erect a solid framework for your overall expected return
by seeking out the best games and pay tables. Limiting your action to the most
favorable odds is the oldest trick in the gambler’s book, so follow that legacy
by becoming a bona fide bargain hunter.

Finally, take a page from Benjamin Franklin’s book and save every penny you
can by taking full advantage of comps and free play. After all, that’s just
another coin earned, and for video poker players looking to increase their
profit margins, every coin counts.