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Straight Flushes are Wild in Joker Wild

Joker wild is one video poker game where you can have two separate straight flush draws in the same hand. Also, in most other video poker games, straight flush draws are differentiated by how many gaps and how many high cards are present. In joker wild, it's a bit more complicated.

Today's information is for Kings or Better joker wild machines only. By this I mean, you get your money back for a pair of kings or aces. The specific numbers I refer to relate to a machine returning 7 for a full house and 20 for four of a kind. The numbers will vary somewhat with different pay schedules, but the logic is accurate anyway. If the joker wild machine available does not pay anything until you get two pair or more, the analysis presented here is not relevant.

I'll use a W to mean "wild card" and indicate the joker. Consider the following hands:

W 5h 6h 9c Tc
W 4h 6h 9c Jc
W 4h 7h 9c Qc

In each case, the choice is the joker by itself, or the joker with the hearts, or the joker with the clubs.

Forget about holding just the joker. Straight flushes are worth a lot in joker poker. Thanks to the joker, the straight flush pops up five times as often as it does in jacks or better. In fact, in the first hand, if you were playing for dollars and held just the joker, you would be throwing away over $2.35 in equity. The last hand isn't so strong, but you'd still be losing 83¢ if you went with the joker by itself.

So, in each hand we're going to go with one of the straight flushes. In each example, the straight flush options (hearts or clubs) seem identical. Every strategy book I've seen published says it doesn't matter whether you go with the hearts or the clubs in these hands. Yet in each case, going with the hearts is the superior play by over 13¢. Let's see why.

With either hearts or clubs, it is just as easy to get three of a kind, straights, flushes, full houses, four of a kinds, or straight flushes. It is impossible (with these hands) to get five of a kinds, or royal flushes. And two pair is never possible when you have a joker in the hand. The only difference between choosing hearts or clubs is the number of high pairs you will get.

From either hearts or clubs, there are going to be 1128 unique 2-card draws, and of those, there will be 127 straights. Drawing from W 9c Tc, 30 of those 127 straight-draws contain a K. For example Kc Qh, Kc Jh , Kc Th , Ks Qh , etc. When a K is being used for a straight, it cannot be used as a high pair. Therefore, from W 9c Tc you are going to end up with 30 fewer high pairs than you will from W 5h 6h . What is the value of those 30 high pairs (averaged over the 1128 possible draws)? A little over 13¢.

As we see above, the number of straights doesn't change, just the number of high pairs. So how can we tell when this is going to happen? It will happen whenever a 5-card straight including the cards in question could reach all the way to either an A or a K, which are the only high cards in this game.

W56 isn't affected by this because the lowest possible straight is 23456, which does not include the A. W45 would be affected, because now the lowest possible straight, A2345, definitely includes a high card. In fact, if we changed the above hands to

W 4h 5h 9c Tc
W 3h 5h 9c Jc
W 2h 5h 9c Qc

we now have three dead-even choices. The hearts are exactly as close to the A as the clubs are to the K.

If W 3h 5h 9c Jc gives us an even choice, how about W 3h 4h 9c Jc? If we compare the W34 with the W35 combinations, we'll see that both combinations can end up with A-low, 2-low, or 3-low straights and straight flushes. The conclusion? W34 and W35 are equal combinations, and if one of them offers a pick 'em choice with W9T, so does the other.

Similarly, W23, W24, and W25 are also equivalent. Any of these have exactly the same value as W9Q, and are lower in value to any other two-gap straight flush combination.

That's it for this time. Until next time, go out and hit a royal flush.

For more information about video poker, we recommend:

This article is provided by the Frank Scoblete Network. Melissa A. Kaplan is the network's managing editor. If you would like to use this article on your website, please contact Casino City Press, the exclusive web syndication outlet for the Frank Scoblete Network. To contact Frank, please e-mail him at fscobe@optonline.net.

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