Improving Your Video Poker Results in 5 Minutes

Video poker offers an opportunity to play in the casino with a high return to player percentage. In fact, some video poker games have the best return in the entire casino. But it takes quite a bit of work to reach these levels.

It’s worth the time and work to become a great video poker player, but you don’t have to wait until you put in dozens of hours to start seeing some results.

Here’s a list of 5 things you can do to get better video poker results in less than 5 minutes.

1 – Pick One Variation to Focus On

In almost any endeavor if you focus all of your energy on 1 thing you have a better chance of mastering it. You can become good at 2 or more things, but it’s extremely difficult to master more than 1 thing. The only way to master 2 things for most people is to master 1 thing, do the minimum to maintain that level, and then master another thing.

This is just as true in real money video poker as in any other area. You can learn how to be a decent player on many different machine variations, but if you want to become a true master you need to start by focusing on 1 video poker variation.

It doesn’t really matter which video poker variation you choose to focus on, but it’s helpful to choose 1 that’s popular so you don’t have a hard time finding machines. It’s also a good idea to pick a variation that has at least 1 fairly common pay table that offers a high return to player number.

If I had to pick just 1 video poker variation I’d pick Jacks or Better. But if you prefer to play a variation with wild cards, I recommend Deuces Wild. Both of these games are popular and they both are frequently available with a good pay table.

2 – Learn the Best and Most Common Pay Tables

Once you’ve chosen a video poker variation to focus on, it doesn’t take long to learn what the most common pay table is for the game and what the best pay table or pay tables are for the game. You don’t need to know everything about every available pay table.

When you know the best pay table or tables and the most common pay table, you always know if a machine is good or bad when you sit down to play.

When you learn about the pay tables, make sure you look at the return to player percentage for the tables that you find. The return to player number dictates how much you get back when you play, so you want to play on machines with pay tables with the highest return to player numbers.

But it’s not good enough to find good pay tables. You also have to use the correct strategy on the machine to realize the maximum return to player percentage that you can. You can learn more about this in the next section.

I suggested considering Jacks or Better in the previous section as the 1 variation to focus on. The main reason why I recommend it is because you only need to know about 1 pay table. If the machine isn’t a 9/6 machine you don’t play. This makes things simple.

If you decide to focus on Deuces Wild the pay tables are a bit more complicated. Look up the Not So Ugly Ducks or Deuces pay table. It’s usually the best pay table you can find, but it’s not the absolute best pay table for the game.

3 – Get a Strategy Card for Your Chosen Game

By now you know you need to focus on 1 video poker variation and you know about the common and best pay tables. The other important ingredient is to learn how to play all of the hands on your chosen game.

You can do what most video poker players do and just take your best guess at how to play each hand. But this lowers the return to player number because you make mistakes when you play this way.

You might not know it, but every hand has a single most profitable way to play it when you’re playing video poker. This is called video poker strategy. And you need to learn how to use it.

Every popular variation of video poker has a strategy card that’s been developed using computers that show the best way to play every hand. All you have to do is get a strategy card for your chosen game.

Strategy cards are easy to use. When you get your starting hand, start at the top of the strategy card and read down. As soon as you find a hand that matches your starting hand, keep what the card says and throw everything else away.

4 – Use the 5 Coin Rule

This isn’t a real rule, but it’s a rule that I always follow when I play video poker. And it’s a rule that you must follow as well.


I call it the 5 coin rule because on all of the video poker variations that I play the maximum wager amount is 5 coins per hand. You could call it the maximum wager or bet rule.

The point is that you need to bet the maximum number of coins when you play video poker. If you play Jacks or Better or Deuces Wild like I recommend, the max coin number is 5.

When you play other casino games you’re almost always better off betting the least amount of money as possible. But when you play video poker the return to player percentage is lower when you bet fewer coins than it is when you risk 5 coins.

Look at the pay table for a Deuces Wild or Jacks or Better game. Look at the pay amount for a natural straight flush for each coin amount. You get a much larger amount for 5 coins than for fewer coins. This is such a large difference that it changes the return to player number.

5 – Play Fewer Hands

I’ve mentioned the return to player numbers a few times, and there are a few things you need to know about them. Video poker machines are like other casinos games, in that they’re designed to make a profit for the house.

This means that they have a return to player number below 100%. Some video poker games offer a return close to 100%, but they don’t quite get there.

For full disclosure, there have been a few video poker games with pay tables that offered slightly over 100% return. But you had to play 100% perfect strategy, and these games have almost all been replaced. If you can find 1 and know the right strategy it’s a great way to play. But don’t hold your breath.

When you’re playing any casino game that has a return to player under 100% it means the game or machine is keeping the difference between the return to player percentage and 100% as profit.

For example, if a game has a 95% return to player, the casino is keeping 5% of the money bet on the game. If you play a couple hours and make a total of $1,000 in bets, the casino is going to keep around $50 for profit. If you play long enough the casino is going to keep exactly 5% of the total of all of your wagers.

The main way to limit your losses when you’re gambling is to limit how much you risk or bet. Any time you’re gambling with a return less than 100% you need to limit your bets. When you play video poker, the fewer hands you play, the less money you lose.

Conclusion

Video poker has so many different variations that if you try to learn how to play all of them well you can easily get confused. You’re better off focusing on 1 video poker variation. This makes it easier to avoid mistakes and lets you learn more about playing your chosen game at an expert level.

It only takes a couple minutes to learn the best pay table and the most common pay table for 1 variation of video poker. With this information you always know if you’re playing on a good or bad machine.

The other 3 recommendations in this article can be accomplished in 5 minutes or less easily. Take a few minutes today to improve your video poker results forever.