Video Poker
Video Poker is very different than regular poker; there are no pay lines, no three fruits in a row and no levers to pull. Once you put in your slot card and the amount of money that you wish to bet, you will see 5 cards appear on the screen and then next strategy would be to review your cards and see what cards you want to hold and which ones you want to switch. You can choose any cards you wish, once you have decided which cards to hold press the hold button and it will automatically hold these cards for you. You want to get the best hand possible.
Then hit the deal button and the machine will replace all of the cards that you chose not to hold. Whatever cards you are now dealt, these are your final cards. If you have won the machine will give you additional credits. Each time you play the lowest amount of the bet is $ .25 cents so the credits will appear as 25.
Then the machine will ask you if you wish to begin a new game and you could continue or walk away. When you wish to continue hit the deal button and when you want to stop simply hit the collect button. The betting is very simple; you can choose .25 cents, $ .50 cents, $ 1 a bet or $ 5 a bet which is the maximum amount. If you are playing the $ 1 games then you can play in increments of $1 and use bets up to $ 5.
The Payoffs are a bit different than the payouts of a regular slot. You can play the standard bet or you can play the Max bet. Since this game you can control a bit you can play Max bet and still do well. If you are comfortable playing the standard bets that is ok but of you are going to play the max bets they could pay big if you win. Basically the Jacks or Better may pay 25:1 and four of a kind is 25:1. All American pays about 30:1 and Joker Poker pays about 20:1, these are estimated ratios but they are close to what they are.
A typical machine will pay out 90 percent to 100 percent. A Royal Flush is the best hand you can get and if you achieve this on a max bet then you could walk away with 4000 quarters. You could win a lot but a Royal Flush is hard to come by in regular cards can you image in Video Poker? But that makes the game so much fun. The excitement of Poker with the relaxation of playing one on one without getting nervous because other people know the rules better than you or can play better. It really is a good time and you can win with the right odds. Every casino has different machines so they may vary slightly.
Video Poker - Playing the odds
There are a total of 2,598,960 different combinations that can be dealt to you in Video Poker. With the player getting additional cards the odds of the player getting a Royal Flush is about 40,000 hands later, a straight Flush you may get in about 9,000 hands of Video Poker. These results in percentages are about 63 percent in the Royal Flush and 27 percent chance of two or more in that 40,000. It would take about 80 hours or so to reach 40,000 and you would spend a lot of money to get that jackpot, you may spend more in playing the game then what the winnings would be if you really did win.
The Video Poker Machines are identified by the name of the machine and the payout that machine yields. Some examples of the machines would be 8/5 Jacks or Better or the Jacks or Better 9/6 Machine. No matter what the name of the machine is the payout schedule is the same in all machines, they play the same way and the odds are the same. If you are new to the game of Video Poker, you want to play the machine that has the highest percentage of payouts.
It will tell you on the machine so you won’t have to guess. You may as a new beginner you may be confused by the different machines. For example the 9/6 Jacks are Better Machine or the 8/5 Jacks or Better, what is the difference. The 9/6 machine with the most amount of coins played and the cards being played with a perfect strategy will return a 99.5 percent rate and the 8/5 will only give a return in 97.3 percentage. The small difference between the two will have an effect on your overall win ratio.
