Video Poker: Tradeoffs

26 January 2023

By Royal Flushes

CINDY: I think of video poker as the poor relative of slot machines. I know there are many video-poker players and maybe there are as many video-poker players as craps and roulette players.

ABBY: Or maybe as many as blackjack players. But I agree; to me, as I walk around casinos, I find that video poker is the poorer relative to slot machines as you have said. You just have to count the number of video-poker machines and compare them to the number of slot machines to show you the difference in how much video-poker is played in relation to slots.

CINDY: Still, video-poker players are serious about the games they play. They have to memorize the correct strategies for the individual games and all the game are different.

ABBY: Even those games with the same names will have different pay tables and those pay tables will inform the player how to play that particular game. Jerry “Stickman” on this site does a very thorough job analyzing video-poker play and how such games are played.

CINDY: First off, video poker is not real poker. You are not playing against other players as you would be in a real poker game. Heck, in real poker you can win a hand with nothing, but that is not so with video poker. You play against a stagnant pay table. You make your decisions of play against such a pay table. That’s all there is to it.

ABBY: For players who do not want to go up against real poker players, video poker is a good bet on some machines. You can get machines with just one percent edges.

CINDY: In the past there were machines that paid out 100 percent or more of the money played in them if you knew the right strategy. There aren’t too many opf those left anymore.

ABBY: One drawback is that the “slot points” will be lower for video-poker players. That’s because they are playing machines with higher returns. That’s fine with me. I want to play games that allow me to beat them often enough to make it worthwhile to play them. I can live without big comps or any comps for that matter for my video-poker play.

CINDY: We get plenty of comps for the way we play the different games, table games and some machines. I am satisfied with that.

ABBY: I am too. I do carry a card telling me how to play certain machines properly. That is important for the video-poker buff. You have to play the machine properly.

CINDY: Correct. I do not have the speed that veteran video-poker players have. I go my own pace and that is the best I can do. I am satisfied with good play even if I am somewhat slow.

ABBY: Video-poker players have one thing going against them. They only receive the premium hands on rare occasions. Maybe a royal flush once every 40,000 hands on some machines. Okay, the losing streaks are longer than in a regular table game. That you have to deal with. You have many more losing sessions than winning sessions. Video-poker players are aware of this. I hope the are aware of this.

CINDY: Yes, video poker has a legion of committed players. I think these machines and variations of these machines will be with us for a long, long time.

ABBY: True.