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Not all video poker games are the same

Look at the following two pay schedules for two different video poker games. Which game would you play and why?

(Note: The payouts are per coin played.)

I would bet dollars to doughnuts the majority of video poker players would play the game with the pay schedule listed in the first column. Why? Because most players are attracted to the video poker games that have bigger payoffs for four-of-a-kind hands (which is the case for the game in column one versus column two).

Let’s take a closer look at the two pay schedules. Besides the game in column one paying more for four-of-a-kind hands, it also pays more for a straight (5 coins versus 4 coins). Thus far, it looks like column one has the better pay schedule, but hold off just a second. Glance down to the payoffs for two pair and what do you see? A one-coin payoff for column one and two-coin payoff for column two. No big deal you say? Well, guess what? It is a big deal.

Deciding which video poker game to play based on how much four-of-a-kind hands pay is not the right way to go about selecting a video poker game. What ultimately determines which game you should play is the game’s expected return (or ER). The ER is a percentage that tells you what the expected theoretical return is for a game (if you play every hand correctly over millions of hands). You won’t find the ER listed on video poker machines. However, it is readily available in books, strategy cards, and video poker sites on the internet. If you don’t know what the ER is of the game you are playing in a casino, you shouldn’t be playing it. Generally, the greater the ER, the better the game is for the player.

I won’t keep you in suspense any longer. The game in column one is Double Bonus Poker and the game in column two is Jacks-or-Better (or sometimes called Draw Poker). Both are popular games that you’ll find on video poker machines. The ER for the Double Bonus game in column one is 97.8% whereas for the Jacks-or-Better game in column two, it’s 99.5% (assuming the royal flush pays 1000 coins for max coins played). You might think that difference in percent is not a big deal, but it really is if you’re serious about winning. Your goal should be to play only video poker games that have the highest ER in a casino. The casino manager isn’t going to tell where these games are located. It’s up to you to find them and play them.

Here’s another example of how playing any ol' video poker game can cost you a lot of money. Last week someone next to me was playing a video poker game with a 95% ER when on the same machine, mind you, there was a different game with a 99.1% ER. That is really sad. Moreover, at another casino that I visited, they had Bonus Poker on many video poker machines. However, the pay schedules where not the same on all the machines. Some machines had the pay schedule listed in column one for Bonus Poker, while others had the schedule listed in column two (even though both games were labeled Bonus Poker).

The Bonus Poker in column one has an ER of 99.1%, whereas the Bonus Poker in column two has an ER of only 98.5%. Smart players would have played the Bonus Poker game with the pay schedule listed in column one.

Suppose you visit a casino and see a video poker game that has a pay schedule that is different from any that you have even seen before. This recently happened to me. The game I was looking at was Deuces Wild and the pay schedule on the screen was this:

I’m familiar with most pay schedules for deuces wild games, but this schedule was different. Since I wasn’t sure what the ER was for this game, I jotted down the pay schedule and when I went back home, I used the Video Poker For Winners software on my computer to easily compute the ER (which computed to 98.9%).

Using strategy cards and video poker training software are two tools that can help any player (even a beginner) play video poker like a pro. You shouldn’t even think about playing video poker unless you use these tools to optimize your game.

(Note: You can read more about video poker strategy cards and training software in my web store on www.smartgaming.com.)

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