How to Play Magic Poker Video Poker

Magic Poker video poker puts forth some interesting twists for online video poker players. If you can get either a pair of three of a kind on your initial deal, you’ll have a couple chances to draw cards to fill out the hand. And, if you have a winning combination, you can get paid multiple times on it.

The world of video poker is growing all the time. In casinos, you can keep it simple by playing Jacks or Better, which is still the most common and popular of all video poker games. But there are countless machines which offer all kinds of twists on the basic gameplay provided by Jacks or Better.

In terms of online video poker, some of the most inventive formats have been steadily arriving over the past few years. People can play for real money and still get all the variety they would enjoy if they were searching through banks of video poker machines in a casino.

Magic Poker video poker stands as one of these ingenious online-only video poker variations. You can get comfortable with the game by trying out it for free. And then, when you’re ready, you can start making bets and win real money in return.

For the most part, Magic Poker video poker follows in the path of most other video poker games. You’ll still be getting a five-card deal and will have the chance to improve it on the draw. You’ll also have the chance to quit on a hand. If you get a deal that you don’t think has a good chance, you can simply move on to the next hand. You would only lose your initial bet in that case.

But if you get some cards that you like, you can bet again to see the draw. In this way, you would be putting your money behind the deals you think are worthwhile. On top of that, you’ll have the chance to get paid at every step of the process in Magic Poker video poker. For example, if you get a winning combination on the initial deal, you’ll get paid for it. The same goes for the draw, so you have a chance to get paid twice for a single hand.

There is also a twist that allows you to carry a pair or three of a kind through multiple draws. For example, if you get three of a kind on the deal, you would get two draws. And you would get paid each time for the three of the kind even if you don’t improve upon it.

If this all seems too good to be true, remember that you have to bet at every stage of Magic Poker video poker. That’s different from most video poker, where you bet only once. As a result, the chance of extra winnings is balanced out by the higher betting demands.

In the following article, we’ll explain everything you need to know when playing Magic Poker video poker. We’ll talk about basic video poker action and walk you through all of the different twists in Magic Poker. Finally, we’ll look at how to develop proper strategy while also looking at the expected payback for this unique game.

How to Play Video Poker

Magic Poker video poker contains some interesting twists and turns that might be unfamiliar to those who have played the most common version of the game. But there’s nothing in the game that’s too confusing. As long as you know how to play a basic hand of video poker, you should be alright.

If you’ve never played video poker before, however, you should get the basics down before trying Magic Poker video poker online. It will help to ensure you understand the mechanics of the game before worrying about any special twists.

• Video poker is a game that is extremely gambler-friendly, especially when compared with other casino games. Let’s take a look at the many ways that it will benefit you when you play.
• Video poker is really simple to learn. You’ll see as we walk you through the process that it is intuitive. This is the case even if you’ve never played any kind of poker before in your lifetime.
• Video poker offers the opportunity for great variety of play. You can change up the pay tables, find a game with special twists, or even play multiple hands at once. And, as we said, online video poker has extended variety even further thanks to games like Magic Poker video poker.
• Video poker is a one-person game. You can play at your own leisure and pace. And there won’t be any pressure put on you by other players, dealers, pit bosses, or anyone like that.
• Video poker allows you to have some control. There is no strategy available for slot machines, which, like video poker, is a one-person game. By making the right choices about the cards you plan to hold and discard, you’ll improve your chances of winning over the long haul.
• Video poker offers clear views of payback. In other words, you won’t have to play a video poker machine or online game while ignorant of what you can expect to win on average. Thanks to pay tables and playing card probability, all of that information is right there for you.
• Video poker can be lucrative. In terms of average payback, video poker is one of the best of all casino games. It’s just a matter of knowing how to play the game with excellent strategy while choosing the type of video poker you play wisely.
• Video poker suffers no letdown when you play it online. In other words, playing a casino version of video poker will look and feel the same as playing it online. The payback at top gambling websites is just about the same as well.

This list should demonstrate why so many people love this game. Now, it’s time to learn how to play a basic hand. Then, we can show you how Magic Poker video poker branches out from that basic format.

Step 1: Your Bankroll

When playing video poker online, you’ll have to create and fund a gambling account so that you can make bets and win real money in return. You can fund the account by inputting a credit card or, depending on the site, using cryptocurrency. Players in casinos just need to put money into the slot on the machine.

Once you’ve entered your money, it will be transformed into units such as credits or coins for betting and winning. Each of these units will equal the amount of the denomination you’re playing. For example, on a 25-cent game, one coin will equal 25 cents, two will equal 50, and so on.

Step 2: Your Bet

In the case of most video poker games, you can usually bet between one and five credits. But Magic Poker video poker allows you much more leeway in that department. Depending on the site you’re playing, you might be able to go much higher in terms of credits wagered.

In normal video poker games, a bet of five coins brings back a much higher payback, in terms of proportion, to a lesser bet. But with Magic Poker video poker, your winnings rise in direct proportion with your bets for all winning hands, regardless of how big or how small the bet might be.

Step 3: Your Hand

Magic Poker video poker changes up the rhythm of play somewhat when you are dealt certain hands. We’ll talk about that in the section below. But the basic decision-making process for holds and discards is essentially the same as if you were playing something like Jacks or Better in a casino.

You can compare video poker to the card game known as Five-Card Draw. Both games give you a five-card deal and ask you to choose the cards you want to hold and discard. Any card you discard will be replaced by others from the deck as you try to make the best possible poker hand.

In the case of Five-Card Draw, however, you have to try to beat everyone at the table to win the pot. To do that, you either have to form a better hand than everyone else or force everyone else to fold their hands.

But video poker doesn’t require any of that, because you’re the only player at the virtual table. Instead, you’ll be trying to form one of the winning combinations offered by the pay table. When playing Magic Poker video poker, these are the winning combinations available to you:

• Two pair
• Three of a kind
• Straight (five cards of consecutive rank, like 3-4-5-6-7)
• Flush (five cards of same suit)
• Full house (three of a kind and two pair in the same hand)
• Four of a kind
• Straight flush (straight with five cards of same suit)
• Royal flush (ten, jack, queen, king, and ace of the same suit)
• Five of a kind

When you look at this list, you have to realize that the combinations on top are relatively common occurrences in video poker. You shouldn’t get overly excited to achieve them, because they don’t pay that much.

By contrast, the combinations at the bottom of the list will pay very well. But you won’t see them come up too often during gameplay unless you get very lucky.

You’ll receive five cards on your video poker deal. Because Magic Poker video poker includes a joker as a wild card, you’ll be getting dealt from a deck with 53 cards instead of the standard 52. These cards are constantly being shuffled by the game’s software to ensure that each deal is random.

Making Your Decision

When you receive your five cards, you should start to assess it for combinations resembling the ones above. Maybe you’ll have a winning combination right off the bat. But it’s more than likely that you’ll need the draw to give you a chance to form a winning hand.

First, you have to decide the cards that you want to hold and the ones that you want to discard. Cards that you hold will remain in your final five-card hand. This is when the hand will be judged a winner or loser, so you have to make sure the cards are worthwhile to you.

Meanwhile, the cards you discard will replaced by others from the deck on the draw. At this point the draw will contain 48 cards, since the five you received on the deal are now gone from the original 53. Like the deal, the draw is completely random.

Once you make your decision, you’ll click on the icon for each card that you wish to hold (if there are any). When you signal for the draw, the discarded cards will be replaced. Your hand is complete at this point, and any winnings that you achieved will be added to your bankroll.

That’s how video poker works on the most basic level. You’ll see that your decision-making for holds and discards will still come into play when playing Magic Poker video poker. But you’ll have to make some other decisions along the way.

Magic Poker Video Poker Game Play

Betting Each Round

When you play video poker in most instances, you’re only betting once. You bet at the start to get the deal, and that also gives you access to the draw.

But Magic Poker video poker changes that equation a bit. To start the hand, you have to make your bet. But if you want to continue the hand to the draw, you have to bet again at the same amount that you used for the deal.

Let’s take a look at the process. Imagine that you’re playing Magic Poker video poker and you make a 10-credit bet to receive the deal. You receive the following:

You have five cards that are unconnected. If you were to play this hand on a Jacks or Better machine, you might hold onto the ace of clubs in the hopes that you could at least draw another ace for a pair of high cards. Such a hand usually returns even money in Jacks or Better-style games.

But when we get to the Magic Poker video poker pay table in a bit, you’ll see that there’s no payback for any pair. It takes at least two pair before you get paid. As a result, there’s no real advantage that you’ll gather if you hold the ace.

When you take all of that into consideration, you realize that you don’t have a hand that is likely to come out a winner. Of course, you could get lucky on the draw. But to even see the draw, you’ll have to make another bet and you’ll have to choose at least one card to hold.

That’s an important factor in deciding to give up on a hand of Magic Poker video poker. You cannot draw five new cards. If you don’t hold anything, you have to give up and move to the next hand.

Let’s take another example. Imagine that you received the following deal.

Again, no winning combinations here. But the four hearts puts you one shy of a flush. And the four, five, and six of hearts puts you within the range of a straight flush.

Here is an example where it might be worth it to bet again to see what the draw might provide. Once you make the second bet, you can then decide which cards to hold and discard and the hand would proceed as usual.

If you do, you run the risk of not getting the draw you want and losing on the draw. That would mean a 20-credit loss instead of just 10.

Yet if you were to end up with a winning combination, it would have been worth it to add the extra bet.

This part of Magic Poker video poker adds another strategic layer to the game. You’ll have to choose whether to continue with the hand first before making your normal decision.

Extra Draws

One of the ways that Magic Poker video poker can boost your winnings is that it allows you to carry valuable cards throughout the entire round. And you can even do that for a second draw in some cases to improve your chances of winning.

In addition, if these carried cards form a winning combination, you’ll get paid for each part of the hand where they appear. Considering that there will be three total betting rounds available on such hands of Magic Poker video poker, it means the possibility of winning three times over.

Here is an area where the Magic Poker video poker format can benefit you when compared to basic video poker. Most of the time in video poker, you get paid only for the winning hand once. (Of course, you’re also betting only once as well.)

Let’s walk you through how all this might work. Imagine that you’ve bet 10 coins to play a hand of Magic Poker video poker and you receive the following on the deal:

In this case, you’ve been dealt at least a pair. That gives you the option to bet, at most, two more draws if you choose to do so. You would have to hold the pair of fours for this scenario to play out.

But if you hold the pair of fours, you’ll be committing to at least one more draw. Let’s see how it plays out.

Unfortunately, you didn’t improve the hand. But you have the chance to take one more draw if you again hold the fours. Or you can give up the hand at this point having taken a 20-coin loss.

Let’s say that you decide to go for another draw. Here is what could happen:

On this draw, you ended up with three of a kind. As you’ll see when you look at the Magic Poker video poker pay table below, it pays off at 5 to 1. Since you bet 10 coins, you made 50 coins.

Meanwhile, your total betting for the round was 30 coins. As a result, you walked away with a profit of 20 coins.

Sticky Cards

Whenever you hear about a card being “sticky” in video poker, it means that it stays in the player’s hand even if it appears after the deal. It does this when it helps the hand in some way.
For example, imagine that you receive the following deal:

You have a pair of fives here, which means that you can get two more draws if you want to keep betting. Let’s say you want to do that and you receive the following cards on the first draw.

You’ve made three of a kind, which is a winning combination. Since the third five improves your hand, it means that you get to carry it into the next draw. And the draw could turn out like this:

Thanks to the second draw and the sticky five of diamonds, you opened up the chance to get the full house. This example shows how the sticky feature can be valuable.

Getting Paid at Each Round

This is another extra that boosts the payback for Magic Poker video poker. Let’s walk through another sample round. Imagine that you receive the following on the deal on a 10-credit wager.

Right off the bat here, you’ve been dealt two pair. That’s a winning combination. In normal video poker, you’d hold the two pair, see what transpired on the draw, and get paid for whatever you ended up with (either two pair or a full house).

Let’s see how the first draw might play out.

You didn’t improve the hand. But it is still a winning combination. As a result, you’ll get paid at this point for it, meaning another 30 coins go into your bankroll.

Let’s see how the final draw plays out.

You made the full house in this round. That means a 120-coin payout for that draw.

Adding it all up, you came away with 180 coins on a 30-coin wager, for a 150-coin profit. Getting paid at every round can be extremely beneficial, as this example proves.

Keep in mind that you’ll also get paid for the following hands no matter what round of betting they occur, even the deal. But the difference with these hands is that they will finish that particular hand off, even if you might have otherwise had some draws left to you.

• Straight
• Flush
• Full house
• Four of a kind
• Straight flush
• Royal flush
• Five of a kind

In other words, if you were to receive a five of a kind on the deal, you’d get paid for that hand right off the bat. But that would complete that round and you would start a new hand at that point.

Bonus Payoffs

There are two other special bonuses that can come up in a session of Magic Poker video poker. Each of these bonuses can boost your payback without having to make an extra wager.

In the top left corner of the Magic Poker video poker screen, you’ll see a certain four of a kind hand listed. This is your goal.

In addition, you’ll see a graphic in the top right that looks like a footpath leading to a 40-coin symbol in the middle. There are 18 steps on this footpath.

Each time that you manage three of a kind during game play, you’ll see one of these steps light up. Once you reach the middle after all 18 steps are lit up, you’ll receive the 40-coin bonus.

It’s a little bonus for someone who plays Magic Poker video poker often online. You should be able to hold on to your progress toward this particular bonus by entering specific information on the website you’re using.

Magic Poker Video Poker Pay Tables and Payback Percentage

Magic Poker video poker offers a somewhat unique pay table as further incentive to play the game. Take a look below.

Coins/Hands	1 coin	2 coins	3 coins	4 coins	5 coins
Five of a kind	800	1600	2400	3200	4000
Royal flush	600	1200	1800	2400	3000
Straight flush	100	200	300	400	500
Four of a kind	40	80	120	160	200
Full house	12	24	36	48	60
Flush	9	18	27	36	45
Straight	7	14	21	28	35
Three of a kind	5	10	15	20	25
Two pairs	3	6	9	12	15

To provide some context, take a look at the pay table for a common Jacks or Better game.

Coins/Hands	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 pairs	2	4	6	8	10
Jacks or better	1	2	3	4	5

You’ll see that, for most winning hands, the Magic Poker video poker comes out on top. Where it will really impact your payback is on the more common hands. For example, getting 5 to 1 for three of a kind is a real boost (compared to 3 to 1 on Jacks or Better).

You might also notice that the Magic Poker video poker includes a five of a kind line at the top of the table. And you won’t see that on the Jacks or Better pay table.

The reason for that is that the five of a kind only becomes possible with the joker involved as it is in Magic Poker video poker. There is no joker in Jacks or Better, which means no chance for five of a kind.

In terms of payback percentage, Magic Poker video poker comes in at about 96.6%. This is much less than the Jacks or Better game at 99.54%.

Why does the Magic Poker video poker lag so much in this department? For all of the bonuses offered, the hit that you’ll take by having to bet on both the deal and the draw will be hard to overcome.

At 96.6% payback, your long-term outlook for Magic Poker video poker isn’t great. Even with any bonuses offered by online casinos, you’d probably still fall well short of eliminating the house edge and making a profit.

That said, your possibility of earning a significant payback in the short term still exists because of all the bonuses. For that reason, you might want to consider Magic Poker video poker if you’re the type who isn’t concerned about the risk as much as the reward.

Strategy for Magic Poker Video Poker

To maximize your potential payback while playing Magic Poker video poker, you should try to utilize ideal strategy. By that, we mean you’re making the right mathematical choice at every step along the way.

For most video poker games, that means knowing what cards to hold and discard on every possible deal. But in the case of Magic Poker video poker, that also means you have to know when to give up on a hand.

That makes it a little bit tricky. Most video poker simulations and instructional methods can’t account for such a twist on game play.

But we still would recommend coming up with your own strategy for Magic Poker video poker. The problem with the recommendations is that you have no way of knowing how accurate they might be. As a result, you could end up getting steered into making inadvisable choices.

Developing Your Own Strategy

One way you can account for this twist is to think of in terms of deals where you would normally hold one card or less when playing normal video poker. On deals like that, you probably don’t have much of a combination that would be useful in Magic Poker video poker. As a result, such deals would probably be good to throw away before moving on to the next hand.

You should always hold onto pairs in Magic Poker video poker because of the chance to get two draws. As for deals where you might have two or three cards connected by suit and/or rank, you’ll have to take your best guess.

Strategic Resources

As for all other deals, you should make sure to learn how to play those with airtight strategy. You have to know which combination of holds and discards maximizes your potential payback. And that usually requires some help.

After all, the math involved can be quite difficult. Certainly, it’s too hard to figure out on the spot with reliable accuracy. You’re likely to make mistakes, which means that you’ll be hurting your payback.

Below, you’ll find the two methods of video poker instruction we recommend.

Video Poker Training Software

Training software is especially helpful for those who are just learning video poker. It allows you to walk through the steps of playing the game, from bankroll through betting all the way to playing hands. And you can learn how to play with proper strategy along the way.

As you play your hands of video poker on training software, you’ll have to decide what to hold and discard, just as if you were playing for real. When you make an incorrect choice, the software will tell you what you’ve done wrong. In this way, you’ll eventually learn the right play for every hand.

Strategy Charts

In the case of Magic Poker video poker, there might not be a specific chart available for it online, since it’s a relatively new online game. However, you can substitute a Jacks or Better pay table and get away with it. The basic structure of the payback is similar enough that the advice should work in both cases.

On a strategy chart, the combinations of cards that you might receive on the deal will be ranked. These rankings are based on their value going forth with the hand. When you spot the cards in your hand ranked highest on the list, you’ll know to hold them.

Magic Poker Video Poker Pros and Cons

Magic Poker Video Poker Conclusion

Magic Poker video poker looks to reveal big winnings right before your eyes when the smoke clears. It will require some heavy betting for you to get to that point. But a successful deal can pay you back many times over to compensate.