Sevens and Joker Wild Video Poker

Sevens and Joker Wild video poker puts more wild cards into the hands of players than just about any other video game out there. On top of that, the sevens replaces the more common twos as wild cards. That makes it a unique strategic challenge and potentially lucrative video poker game all at once.

One of the chief advantages of video poker is that you can find a game to fit whatever style of play you like. There are simple versions like Jacks or Better video poker, then there are more complex versions with extra bets and special features involved. On top of that, the pay tables vary, with some being relatively stable and others much more volatile.

Then, there are wild card games. With wild cards, you have the opportunity to make hands that are extremely rare in normal video poker. That’s because a wild card can be transformed into whatever card makes your hand the best.

The two most common types of video poker games with wild cards are Deuces Wild and Joker’s Wild. In Deuces Wild, the twos in the deck of 52 are deemed wild. Joker’s Wild adds a 53rd card, the joker, to the deck and makes that the only wild card.

Why Choose Sevens and Joker Wild Video Poker

With Sevens and Joker Wild video poker, you get a little of both with a little twist. There’s a wild joker here, so you’ll be playing from a deck of 53. And the sevens in the deck are wild as well.

That gives you a total of five wild cards out of 53. As a result, it’s not that uncommon for you to have multiple wild cards in your hand when playing Sevens and Joker Wild video poker. You can imagine the huge hands you might be able to make when that occurs.

By designing the sevens as wild cards instead of deuces, Sevens and Joker Wild video poker also creates some interesting differences from Deuces Wild. You’ll have to adjust your strategy a bit because of this. But it should make for an interesting challenge.

There are drawbacks to consider, however. As it’s a relatively rare game, you might have a hard time finding a pay table to your liking. And Sevens and Joker Wild video poker is also a volatile game, meaning it won’t be easy for you to keep your bankroll afloat with scoring some of the rarer hands on the pay table.

In the following article, we’ll tell you everything you need to know about the game known as Sevens and Joker Wild video poker. We’ll explain how basic video poker works, then we’ll take you through playing with wild cards involved. And we’ll take a look at what you can expect from the pay tables as well as talk about how to play the game with ideal strategy.

The Advantages of Video Poker

Video poker makes for one of the best possible games you can play. This is the case whether you’re in a casino or playing on an online gambling site. The benefits for gamblers rival those you might get from playing any other game.

In a way, you can consider video poker to combine some of the best elements of table games and slot machines. It’s similar to slot machines in the following ways:

• Video poker can be played with just a single person at a machine. There isn’t any need for you to deal with other patrons or employees. On top of that, you can play at your own pace, fast or slow.
• Video poker is easy to play. You can learn how to play in just a few hands or so. As opposed to some complex table games, basic video poker is simple to understand.
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• Video poker is a perfect game to play online. You don’t have to worry about losing something in the translation. Many top websites have all the best video poker games among their offerings.
• Video poker offers great variety. Just as you can go into a casino and see dozens of different slot offerings, so too can you find all kind of twists on basic video poker. That means play will never get stale.

Video poker is similar to table games in the following ways:

• The game contains an element of strategy. By choosing the cards you want to hold and discard from each deal, you have an impact on your outcome.
• Video poker is bound by probabilities. In this case, it comes from the limited number of cards in the deck. That situation allows you to estimate how often you can expect winning hands to arrive.
• Video poker allows you to estimate payback percentage. When playing slot machines, you won’t have any idea how much one machine might pay back compared to another. You won’t have to guess with a video poker machine, since the probabilities and payouts are all known.
• Video poker offers excellent payback. In general, it dwarfs what you can expect from slot machines. And the highest-paying video poker machines come in right around the same area, in terms of payback, as the best table games.

You can understand why many people think that video poker comes out on top when it comes to gambler-friendly casino games. It takes a lot of the best elements of slot machine and table games and leaves out the bad stuff.

If you already know how to play basic video poker and want to get down to the nitty-gritty of Sevens and Joker Wild video poker, you can skip ahead. But if you’re a complete novice to the game, we’ll talk about how to play a hand of video poker to help you out. Once you learn that, you’ll have no problem moving on to the Sevens and Joker Wild variation.

Learning Basic Video Poker

Step 1: Start up a Bankroll

You’ll need a bankroll to make bets to play video poker and also to collect your winnings. To create one, just insert some cash or a redemption ticket into the slot on the machine. For those playing at a real money online casino, you’ll have to create an account then fund it.

The money in your bankroll will be represented on the video poker screen as credits or coins. These will be the units used to make your bets and how you’ll get paid. Each of these units will be equal to one unit of the denomination you’re playing.

For instance, imagine that you’re playing at a quarter machine and want to bet five coins. That means you’ll be wagering 5 times .25, which is $1.25.

Step 2: Decide on the Size of Your Bet

Sevens and Joker Wild video poker resembles the vast majority of video poker games because it allows you to wager between one and five credits per hand. The five-credit bet is known as the “Max Bet.” Normally, you should consider making the max bet on every single hand.

But the most popular online pay table for Sevens and Joker Wild video poker actually contains no difference in proportion of payouts for any of the winning hands by amount bet. This means betting the five coins won’t actually help your payback percentage in any way. Most video poker games feature a bonus for the royal flush when you bet five coins instead of one through four.

That said, you shouldn’t try to change up your bet based on trying to outguess the software inside the game or the machine. Many people think they might be “due” for a good or bad hand based on the hands that have come before.

But you have to remember each deal and draw in Sevens and Joker Wild video poker is completely random. Your chances are always the same of hitting winning hands or drawing certain cards.

Step 3: Play out Your Hand

For now, we’ll just talk about a basic hand of video poker. We won’t get into the wild card aspect of Sevens and Joker Wild video poker. This way, you can get the rhythm of play down before learning about that side of the game.

Video poker basically recreates the card game known as Five-Card Draw Poker in computerized form. The format of deal then draw is the same. Your chances of achieving winning hands is also the same.

What’s different is the fact that, in Five-Card Draw, you have to do what it takes to beat as many players as there are at the table. That might mean passing up a common hand in favor of trying to make a rarer one. Or it could mean trying to bluff your opponents into bluffing.

None of that comes into play when you’re playing video poker. All you have to do is create a hand that’s considered to be a winning one by the pay table. If you do, you’ll receive some credits in return.

Because of the presence of wild cards, the hands considered to be winners are a bit different in Sevens and Joker Wild video poker than in non-wild card games. Here are the hands you’ll be trying to make:

• Three of a kind
• Straight (five cards in a row in 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)
• Five of a kind
• Wild royal flush (royal flush achieved with the help of a wild card)
• Royal flush (ten, jack, queen, kind and ace of the same suit)
• Five wild cards

What you’ll find is that the hands at the top of this list come up relatively often during Sevens and Joker Wild video poker. As you move down the list, those hands will be more difficult to achieve. The pay increases as you move down the list as well.

The first step to playing a hand of video poker is to assess the deal. Five cards will appear on the screen as soon as you make your wager and hit the “deal” button. These cards will come from the 53 in the deck (52 standard and one joker).

You will be looking to see if any of the cards form one of the winning combinations listed above. If they do and you don’t think you can do any better on the draw, you can hold on to all five cards and leave the hand as it is.

But you can also discard some or all of the cards from your deal. These cards will be replaced by others from the deck. The deck will only have 48 cards remaining, since the five cards on the deal will already be in your hand and can’t come to you again.

What you have to do at this point is decide which winning hands are worthy of pursuing. You should base this decision on the odds that you have of making one of those hands. But you should also consider the potential payout for those hands as well.

Let’s take a look at sample deal to demonstrate. Imagine that the following five cards showed up on your screen:

We purposely left any wild cards out of this hand to keep it simple for now. Take a look at those five cards and see if there are any possible winning combinations.
You’ll probably spot the pair of eights. By holding on to these two cards, you can possibly make three of a kind, a full house, four of a kind, or even five of a kind, since the wild cards are involved.

Holding on to the four diamonds in the hand give you an excellent chance at making a flush. In fact, between the other diamonds and the five wild cards, you will have 13 possible “outs” for the flush. With only 48 cards in the deck, you have a better than 1 in 4 chance of making that hand.

You also have three diamonds of consecutive rank in the eight, nine, and ten. Getting two more diamonds of consecutive rank would give you the high-paying straight flush hand.

When you first start playing Sevens and Joker Wild video poker, you might find that it takes you some time to cycle through all of these possibilities. As you play more often and start to learn strategy, you’ll be able to spot the best plays pretty quickly. We’ll talk more about strategy in a bit.

Once you make that decision, you will press the buttons for the cards you want to hold (if any). The machine will replace the cards you’ve discarded with others from the deck. At this point, your hand is complete.

You will see any winnings you’ve amassed get added to your bankroll. As far as deductions from your bankroll, that will actually take place when you make your bet. If you still have credits in your bankroll at the completion of the hand, you can continue to play by repeating the steps.

If you do run out of credits and want to continue, you can repeat step 1 to replenish your bankroll. You can also walk away from the machine and collect your winnings by hitting the “redeem” button. When you’re playing at a machine, a ticket will be printed that you can then use elsewhere in the casino.

That’s how video poker works in its most basic form. Now that you have that down pat, we can start to talk about how wild cards work when you’re playing Sevens and Joker Wild video poker.

Playing With Wild Cards

The difference between playing video poker with five wild cards compared to playing with none is really night and day. Hands that you would never even consider trying to attain playing normal video poker are well within your reach when you’re playing Sevens and Joker Wild video poker.

But the payback is adjusted so you’re not taking too much advantage of the game. As a result, the house edge, which ensures that the casino or gambling website makes money, stays in place.

In Sevens and Joker Wild video poker, there are four sevens in the deck of 53, all of which are designated as wild. The joker is also a wild card. Five out of 53 cards, a little less than one in ten, are wild.

When you get a wild card, it can be turned into whatever card improves your hand the most. If you get one or more wild cards on the deal, you have to speculate on how they might be used going forward. This requires thinking ahead to cards you might receive on the draw.

If you get a wild card on the draw, it, along with any wild cards that you carried over from the deal, will automatically be turned into the card that helps your hand most. The software will essentially do the math for you and make sure your winnings are maximized at that point.

Let’s take a look at how this all works. Imagine that you get the following cards on the deal:

Four of Spades, Four of Clubs, Seven of Diamonds, King of Spades, Ace of Spades
As the hand is, this would not be a winning hand in normal video poker. But you have to remember that the seven is wild. You will always hold on to a wild card that you receive on the deal in Sevens and Joker Wild video poker.

The question is, what do you hold with it? If you hold on to the pair of fours, you’ll be going into the draw with three of a kind, since the seven can be turned into a four. Three of a kind returns even money in video poker, meaning you would get your original bet back.

But there are many possibilities to improve the hand on the draw. You might also want to consider a flush possibility, with the three spades and the wild card. Out of 48 cards left in the deck, you’d have 13 ways of getting the flush—five wild cards and eight spades (remember that the seven of spades is already included as a wild card).

You also might want to try to make a stab at a wild royal flush. This could occur if you hold on to the king and ace of spades. That wild card can slot in as a ten, jack, or queen of spades, depending on what cards you draw to conceivably fill out the royal flush.

You can see how the wild card opens up a world of possibilities. Let’s take a look at how the draw can change things. Imagine you decide to go for the royal flush and therefore keep the seven (wild card) and the king and ace of spades, and you receive the following draw:

You didn’t draw to the wild straight flush, but you did receive another wild card. The software will not determine how the two wild cards should be used to make the hand as lucrative as it can be.

The two wild cards can be connected to any of the individual ranks to make three of a kind. But that pays off only even-money, as we said earlier.

If, however, you imagine the joker and seven of diamonds as any 10 and any queen, you get a 10 through ace. That makes a straight, which is a payoff of 2 to 1, and that’s the pay you will receive.

Let’s take a look at another deal to show how some strategy can come into play with Sevens and Joker Wild video poker and the wild cards:

The two wild cards are a promising start. You might think from there that you should go into the draw with one of the other cards also held to give yourself three of a kind. But that would be a mistake.

In this case, it’s best just to keep the two wild cards. You will have three of a kind on the draw regardless of what other cards you get. Plus, by only the wild cards, you’ll be giving yourself more of a chance to draw even more.

Again, it’s a case of endless possibilities with the wild cards in Sevens and Joker Wild video poker. But you have to be aware of all of the different ways you can approach the hand.

We’ll talk more about that once we get into strategy. For now, it’s time to look at the pay table for Sevens and Joker Wild video poker.

Sevens and Joker Wild Video Poker Pay Table and Payback Percentage

Many video poker games have multiple different pay tables attached to them. But there haven’t been too many reports of Sevens and Joker Wild video poker machines being circulated of late. As a result, the online version of the game might provide the only pay table available to you.

Volatility is an important concept to understand, especially if you’re only going to play casually. Games that are less volatile tend to have pay tables that are balanced with payouts that go up gradually from common hands to rare hands. This kind of pay table allows for players to sustain their bankroll over a longer period of time, albeit with less chances of large winnings.

Games that are high in volatility cause more drastic swings in your bankroll. You’ll have more chances to win a bunch in a hurry. But you’ll also have to endure more of a risk of losing your entire bankroll in a hurry.

As pay tables go, the one that exists for Sevens and Joker Wild video poker has relatively high volatility for wild card games. It’s top-heavy, with huge windfalls for hands for five wild cards and a natural royal flush. But as you go down to the more common hands, payouts are doled out more stingily.

Let’s take a look at the pay table for the online version of Sevens and Joker Wild video poker.

Coins/Hand	1 Coin	2 Coins	3 Coins	4 Coins	5 Coins
Five of a kind wilds	600	1,200	1,800	2,400	3,000
Natural royal flush	300	600	900	1,200	1,500
Four of a kind (Sevens)	25	50	75	100	125
Wild royal flush	15	30	45	60	75
Five of a kind	10	20	30	40	50
Straight flush	6	12	18	24	30
Four of a kind	3	6	9	12	15
Full house	3	6	9	12	15
Flush	3	6	9	12	15
Straight	2	4	6	8	10
Three of a kind	1	2	3	4	5

Looking at that pay table without any context might not give you much information. As a result, let’s compare it to the two most common wild card video poker games. First up, here is a pay table for Deuces Wild where the twos in the deck of 52 are wild.

Deuces Wild Pay Table

Coins/Hand	1 Coin	2 Coins	3 Coins	4 Coins	5 Coins
Royal flush	250	500	750	1,000	4,000
Four deuces	200	400	600	800	1,000
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

Now, let’s take a look at what you can expect from a Joker’s Wild pay table, where there is a single wild card (the joker) in a deck of 53:

Joker’s Wild Pay Table

Coins/Hand	1 Coin	2 Coins	3 Coins	4 Coins	5 Coins
Royal flush	250	500	750	1,000	4,000
Five of a kind	200	400	600	800	1,000
Wild royal flush	100	200	300	400	500
Straight flush	50	100	150	200	250
Four of a kind	20	40	60	80	100
Full house	7	14	21	28	35
Flush	5	10	15	20	25
Straight	3	6	9	12	15
Three of a kind	2	4	6	8	10
Two pairs	1	2	3	4	5
Kings or better	1	2	3	4	5

You’ll probably notice that the Joker’s Wild pay table is drastically different than the other two. It awards a few hands (a pair of kings or better, two pair) that don’t even pay off in Deuces Wild or Sevens and Joker Wild video poker. Since there’s only one wild card in that game, it isn’t nearly as easy to get rare hands as in the other two.

Perhaps the better comparison then is between Deuces Wild and Sevens and Joker Wild video poker. You’ll see a bit more balance in the Deuces Wild game, especially in the mid-paying hands. Sevens and Joker Wild offers the five-wild card payout to help balance this out.

What ultimately matters the most is the payback percentage that you get from these pay tables. Unfortunately for Sevens and Joker Wild video poker, that payback is a bit lacking. The pay table listed above will return the player about 96.4% of their original bankroll.

As a result, they will be suffering a loss of around 3.6% on average. Such a loss would be hard to overcome by means of perks and loyalty rewards from casinos and gambling websites. If you were to play Sevens and Joker Wild video poker regularly over a long period of time, you most likely would end up with a deficit.

But casual players don’t have to avoid the game. For one thing, the payback percentage won’t matter as much over a smaller amount of play. If you don’t play Sevens and Joker Wild video poker that often, luck will dictate your payback more than probability.

On top of that, you might want to trade off some of the payback for the convenience of online play and the potential for some of the higher payouts in the game. It all depends on what you’re looking for from the game.

Learning Strategy for Sevens and Joker Wild Video Poker

When you play video poker, you should strive to maximize your winnings as much as possible. This is especially true with a game like Sevens and Joker Wild video poker, where you’re already in the hole a bit due to the estimated payback percentage. One way you can do this is by learning perfect video poker strategy.

When you play Sevens and Joker Wild video poker, you will exert your strategy whenever you decide what to hold or discard. What you might not realize is that there’s a single right play for every possible deal that you might receive. That right play is based on the mathematics.

If you play a hand incorrectly, you will be lowering its expected value. Expected value is a video poker concept that imagines what might happen if a certain deal was played over and over again. One combination of holds and discards would bring the best possible return out of all the others.

That’s not to say you can’t get lucky occasionally if you make a decision that isn’t backed up by the probability math. But if you keep making those wrong decisions over time, you can expect your payback to suffer as a result.

The best way to learn the right strategy for Sevens and Joker Wild video poker is to get some help. After all, you don’t want to be trying to figure out such complex math on the spot.

For one, you might get it wrong. And even if you could get it right, it would take a long time to do the calculating. Ideally, you can play video poker pretty quickly to give yourself more chances at a high-paying hand.

With that in mind, we suggest using one of these two resources to learn proper strategy for Sevens and Joker Wild video poker:

Video Poker Training Software

Training software is valuable because it allows you to tailor your strategy to the pay table that you’re playing. You just have to input the pay table into the software. In the case of Sevens and Joker Wild video poker, you’ll also want to include the wild card element.

Once you’ve done that, you can play sample hands as if you were playing for real money. When you make a mistake with a hold and discard based on the math, the software will let you know and tell you the right play. After a while, you won’t make any mistakes and you’ll be ready to play for real money.

Strategy Charts

A strategy chart offers a bit of a quicker fix to learning perfect strategy than software. All it takes is for you to memorize the chart. That isn’t an easy thing to do, but you can streamline it by just concentrating on the parts of the chart where it might not be so obvious how to proceed.

You will see a ranking of all the possible combinations of cards that you can receive on the deal. The strategy chart is based on the probability math, so you can trust it to steer you in the right direction. When you see the combination of cards in your deal that’s ranked highest on the list, you’ll know which cards to hold and which to discard.

Sevens and Joker Wild Video Poker Pros and Cons

Conclusion on Sevens and Joker Wild Video Poker

Sevens and Joker Wild video poker certainly stands out if you like to see a lot of wild cards flying. You won’t have to wait too long before you encounter one. But the overall payback of the game might not be high enough for you to give it a try.