How to Play Video Poker Online

RULES, TIPS, AND BASIC STRATEGY FOR JACKS OR BETTER AND DEUCES WILD

(From How to Beat Internet Casinos and Poker Rooms, by Arnold Snyder.)
© 2005 Arnold Snyder

This article deals primarily with playing video poker online to meet the wagering requirement for an Internet casino bonus.

If you have a bankroll of $5,000 or more—and especially if you are already a knowledgeable video poker player—you may be interested in going after some of the better bonus offers that exclude blackjack play for meeting the wagering requirement, but allow video poker. If you are playing bonuses at a high (professional) level, then I advise you to invest in a software program called “WinPoker” by Bob Dancer. It is not expensive and it can be used to analyze virtually any video poker game and provide the correct strategy for any hand.

I’m going to cover only the most common and popular forms of video poker—Jacks or Better and Deuces Wild. The house advantage on these games, assuming full-pay payout schedules, is very close to the house advantage on a blackjack shoe game—for Jacks or Better about 0.5% and for Deuces Wild typically a little over 0.6%. There are many other forms of video poker that you’ll find on the Internet (and in live casinos), some of which—like true full-pay Deuces Wild or Joker Wild Kings or Better—even offer a tiny player advantage (a few hundredths of a percent) with perfect play. Unfortunately, these games are not as commonly available on the Web and when they are, they are often available with less-than-full payouts that increase the house advantage significantly. More importantly from most players’ perspective, they are even more volatile than Jacks or Better when it comes to variance. Players with tight funds should simply avoid these games even when the full-pay versions are available.

If you are already a video poker nut, and you already know all of this stuff, including the payouts that make the various games full-pay games, as well as the strategies for playing these games, then make your decision on whether to play these games based on the bonus value and your bankroll.

A couple of attractive features of video poker are that you can often play for very low stakes, 5 cents or 10 cents, and you can often find machines that will play multiple simultaneous hands, often as many as 50 simultaneous hands (and even 100 in some casinos). That is, the machines will deal you ten hands with identical cards, you make your hold decisions on one hand, and all ten hands will hold those cards. Then each of the ten hands is separately dealt new cards—that is, with a separate randomly-shuffled deck being used for the dealing on each hand.

On a short bank, you will have much less variance on a ten-play game with 5-cent bets (betting 50 cents per round), than you would with a single-play, five-coin-in, dime game (also betting 50 cents per round). Your speed of play on both games would be similar for getting your action in toward your WR, but you will smooth out the fluctuations dramatically with the ten-play game.

The House Advantage at Jacks or Better

For video poker games, we estimate the house advantage by looking at the Pay Table for the game. Each game has a Pay Table that is considered “full pay,” and variations from this Pay Table make the game a “short pay” game. You should be aware that in a short pay game, the house advantage is much higher. Most Internet casinos that offer video poker games offer Jacks or Better or Deuces Wild, so if we can’t play a blackjack variation for our wagering requirement, our task is to find a Jacks or Better video poker game with a full-pay Pay Table or a Deuces Wild game with payouts at least as good as those that will be shown below.

The Pay Table is simply a chart that displays the payouts for the various hands. In most cases, you must play five “coins” in order to get the full payout on a royal flush. So, on a 5-cent machine, you will bet 25 cents per hand, and on a 25-cent machine, you will bet $1.25 per hand. If you are not penalized for betting a single coin, then it doesn’t matter how many coins you bet. The important factor is that you are playing a full-pay game. This is what you are looking for on Jacks or Better:

Most players should not play Jacks or Better with any other pay table. This table shows the full-pay payouts for both single and five-coin play. If the single-coin play is not full pay, but the 5-coin play is full pay, then only play this game with 5 coins per bet.

Be especially careful to read all of the payouts before you play. A typical short-pay Jacks or Better game will pay only 8 coins for a full house and 5 coins for a flush, instead of 9 coins and 6 coins for these hands respectively, for a single-coin play. With 5 coins in, these short payouts are 40 and 25 instead of 45 and 30. This short-pay Pay Table gives the house a 3% advantage instead of 0.5%, which is unacceptable for most players.

A common trick Internet casinos use to confuse players about a Pay Table’s value is to increase payout(s) on one or more rare hands, while decreasing the payout(s) on more common hands. Don’t be fooled. If a Jacks or Better Pay Table is not identical to the Pay Table above, forget about it unless you are experienced enough to analyze the house edge and related bonus value on your own. I’ve never seen a Pay Table that has been altered from the standard full payouts that doesn’t screw the player and increase the house advantage.

Double or Nothing

Many Internet casino video poker games give the player the option to play “double or nothing” on any win. That is, if you hit say, 3 of a kind on Jacks or Better with 5 coins in for a 15-coin payout, you have the option of trying to double your win to 30 coins by picking a card (one out of four) against the dealer’s card—high card wins. If your card beats the dealer’s card, you may continue to play double or nothing on the 30-coin win, and again on the 60-coin win, etc., until you are satisfied with your win, you lose it all, or you run into the house’s doubling maximum.

There is no house advantage on a doubling bet. It’s like flipping a coin. Be aware that double-or-nothing bets increase the variance on the game.

The strategies for playing video poker are more complicated than the strategies for blackjack. There are a number of good books that describe “simplified” video poker strategies. For our purposes, since you can sit with this book in front of you as you play, all you need is a chart of the Hand Rankings for Jacks or Better.

How to Use the Jacks or Better Video Poker Chart

First, a few tips so that you do not need to consult the chart on every hand.

1) If you have one or two high cards (J, Q, K, or A) in your hand, and no other made or potential hand of value (no pair, and no 3 cards to a possible straight or flush), just keep the high cards and throw away the others.

2) If you have three high cards (and no pair), and two of the high cards are suited, throw away the non-suited high card and draw to the two suited cards.

3) Always draw to a small pair unless you have four cards to a flush, three cards to a royal flush, K-Q-J-10, or 4 cards to a straight flush, in which cases you would draw to non-small-pair hand. Even with four cards to other open-end straights, you keep the small pair.

4) Always draw to a high pair, even when you have four cards to a straight or flush.

5) If you have no high cards, no open-end straight draw, and no four to a flush, throw all five of your cards away and draw a new hand.

6) If you have four to a royal flush, always draw to the royal, unless it means breaking a straight flush. That is, if you have a 9TJQK suited, keep it. But if you have 8TJQK suited, throw away the 8, even though you are throwing away a made flush hand.

If you look at the Hand Ranking chart above, you can see why we follow Tip 6. Four cards to a royal flush is ranked as Hand #4, while a flush is ranked as Hand #6. This example also explains precisely how we use the chart. If we have a choice between a made hand and a draw of potentially higher value, or between two possible draws, we simply consult the chart to see which hand has a higher ranking. You might note that a low pair is ranked at Hand #16, while four cards to an open-end straight is ranked at #21. So, we keep the pair.

If you consult the Hand Ranking chart any time you have a question, you will play accurately and the house advantage over you will be only about 0.5%. ♠