Q:
I was wondering why video poker is 5 coins instead of 4 coins, an even $1 for quarters. Is it because of the odds of the game or perhaps the 5th coin is required for the much larger payout for the royal flush because it jumps from 1000 coins to 4000 coins?
A:
[Editor's Note: We asked Bob Dancer to tackle this question. When you read his answer, you'll see why he's considered the world's foremost authority on video poker.]
Any answer I come up is going to be a guess. I started playing video poker in 1994. While that's longer ago than when many of you began, the game had been going for about a decade before I came along.
The reason, I believe, deals with the way American money is set up. Dollar bills are only four times the value quarters, but $5 bills are five times as large as $1 bills. You can make the math work with the max bet at either four coins or five. If you make it five coins, then there's the awkward $1.25 bet for quarters. If you make it four coins, there's the awkward $4 bet for dollars.
If there were a common 20¢ coin, perhaps called a “fifth,” the problem would go away, because now five-fifths would make a dollar and five $1 coins would make $5.
You used to sometimes see machines with $20 coins in certain high-limit rooms. The reason for this was that a $100 bill served to make one five-coin bet: $100 is a more convenient bet size than $125.
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