Chapter 2: How To Play The Game

Anybody can learn how to play video poker. Anybody can learn drive a stick shift also, but that does not mean that learning to drive a stick shift is a trivial matter. Likewise, learning to play video poker is not a trivial matter and requires an investment of time. “Investment” is the appropriate word here because learning to play video poker correctly will save you money. If you play a lot, it will save you a lot of money.

As important as saving you money, playing with the correct strategy will not diminish your enjoyment of the game. Truthfully, playing correctly will require effort in the beginning, but with practice playing correctly becomes so automatic that it requires almost no effort. In contrast, you could learn to be a card-counter and play blackjack, but this is difficult work because you need to count all the cards played and then keep a running total of the count from hand to hand. In addition, you might get thrown out of a casino for card counting, but it is very unlikely that you would be thrown out for playing video poker with expert strategy.

On the surface, video poker is pretty straightforward. You bet from 1 to 5 coins. Five cards are dealt from a 52-card deck. You hold from 0 to 5 of the dealt cards. You hit a button that draws new cards to replace the ones that you discarded. The machine pays you credits based upon the final five cards.

A ‘pay table’ or ‘payout table’ determines how much you get paid for each hand. Let’s look at the payout table for a popular video poker game. The payout for each hand is in bets. For example, if you bet maximum (5) coins on a 25 cent machine, then 1 bet is $1.25. If you hit the flush in Jacks or Better, you will get $7.50 (6 bets X 5 coins/bet). The machine registers credits in coins, not dollars. One credit on the machine is worth one coin. If you have 200 credits on a 25 cent machine, you will have $50 (200 X 25 cents). So If you end up with a flush in Jacks or Better, you win 6 bets, which works out to be 30 coins (6 bets X 5 coins/bet).

The payout table for Jacks or Better is listed below. With each payout, an example of the hand is presented.

Hand	Payout
Royal Flush	800
Straight Flush	50
Four of a kind	25
Full House	9
Flush	6
Straight	4
3 of a kind	3
Two Pair	2
Jacks or Better	1

So if your final hand is a pair of jacks, queens, kings, or aces, you will win back your original bet ($1.25).

Of course, the better hands are less likely to occur. While a high pair will occur quite often, four-of-a-kind will occur only about 1 in every 430 hands if you play the machine correctly.

The difficulty of the game arises from the fact that 52 cards can be arranged in a very large number of ways. For the initial deal, there are over 2.5 million combinations possible. Fortunately, these combinations can be grouped in such a way that a winning strategy can be learned that is not too complicated. In addition, many of the rules of the strategy are pretty intuitive. For example, if you were dealt the following hand, which cards would you hold?

Holding the pair of fours seems like the logical thing to do and this is the correct play. Of course, there are situations when the correct play is not that obvious. Consider the following hand.

In this case, is it better to hold the pair of fours or hold four to the flush? The correct play is to hold the four to the flush because a flush pays 6 coins. Of course, the correct play may depend on the type of game you are playing (Jacks or Better, etc.). The strategies for the three most popular games are detailed in Chapters 6-8.

A knowledge of poker is helpful to learning video poker, but can also be detrimental. It is important to understand the basic hands that are possible, but the strategies for poker and video poker are very different. Why? In poker, you just want to beat the other players. In video poker, you want to try and get great hands that pay you a lot of money.

Fortunately, for each set of cards that are dealt, it can be determined what the best draw is to achieve the best return. This makes a very different game than poker, where you need to try and guess what hand your opponent has. This also makes video poker much easier because you can know ahead of time exactly what to do in each situation. In addition, you don’t have to worry about the video poker machine shooting you in the back when you get up to leave with your winnings.

With five cards dealt from a 52 card deck, there are a very large number of card combinations that might appear on the draw. Fortunately, a winning strategy can be devised that consists of a relatively small set of rules. Some of these are very obvious, some are not obvious at all. If you learn all the rules, you will be playing with expert strategy. But remember that you can get a great return without knowing all the rules (remember the flat part of the curve at skill level 10?).

It’s time for another picture that will introduce the three most popular games. Figure 7 shows the financial reward of the three most popular games if you play with expert strategy and near-expert strategy. This book describes a near-expert strategy for double bonus because the expert strategies are significantly more complicated than the expert strategies. As you can see in the table, the near-expert strategy will produce an expected financial reward that is very close to the reward produced with the expert strategy (within.01% for double bonus). To play double bonus poker with perfect strategy, you would need many new rules and some of these rules are quite complicated. The expert strategies for ‘Jacks or Better’ and ‘Deuces Wild’ are sufficiently easy to learn that a near-expert strategy is not necessary.

Figure 7

As figure 7 shows, two of the three games offer the player an advantage over the casino. While the casino does have a slight advantage in “Jacks or Better”, the player can still expect to be ahead overall because of other compensation (e.g., rooms, food, and cash back).

There is another game that offers an advantage to the player called “Joker’s Wild”. This game offers about a .6% reward. Unfortunately, because the full-pay version of the game is not as widely available as the other three games, this game is not described here.

It is important to remember that for each of these games, a number of payout tables may be available. Remember that the machines that use the highest payout tables are called ‘full-pay’ machines. These full-pay machines are what you want to be playing. The availability of these machines varies. In general, you can find the most full-pay machines in Las Vegas, but some are available in other locations.

Remember, knowing how to read the payout tables is as important as playing correctly. It is often the case that you can find two machines right next to each other that offer different payouts and a person will be playing the lower payout machine out of ignorance (since there is no obvious way to determine which machines are Full-Pay without knowing what the Full-Pay payout tables are). The existence of these lower payout machines can be good for the smart player, because they can make money for the casino so that they can offer the better paying machines as well.

You can still win playing a game that offers less than 100% and still lose when playing a game that offers more than 100%. The likelihood of being ahead or behind depends upon three things: the payout table of the game, the number of hands that you play, and your luck. Understanding how luck will affect your play is critically important -- an entire chapter is devoted to it (see Chapter 3 -- Variability: Heaven and Hell).

Which game should you play? Of the three most popular games, which is best suited for you? This answer depends on a number of factors. If you are planning on playing a lot, then you may want to play a game that offers a positive return. However, when you factor in the rewards from slot clubs (see chapter 4), all of these games offer a positive return. Ultimately, you want to play the game that you enjoy playing the most as well. You are gambling to have fun, not to make money (if you think you can quit your day job, see Chapter 3).

Figure 8 shows how risky the three games are for a day of solid video poker, which is about 5,000 hands (For complete graphs for what to expect in the short, medium and long run, see Chapter 3).

Figure 8

As you can see, Jacks or Better is a good game because the game is less volatile (i.e., has a skinnier distribution) as the other two games. Personally, I find Jacks or Better to be less exciting because there is less opportunity for big hands (less psychological reward). For example, four-of-a-kind (which is the most common big hand) only pays 125 coins ($31.25). But if you like this game, then play it. The game offers a slightly negative return (-0.46%) which can be brought up to a positive return with other comps (compensation).

Double bonus poker offers a lot of excitement and a good return, but is riskier and a little more difficult to play. This game offers larger payouts for any four-of-a-kind. Most four-of-a-kinds pay 250 coins ($62.50); some pay $100 (2s, 3s and 4s) and four aces pay $200. This game is very exciting. On the down side, you can lose a lot of money quickly when you are not hitting those four-of-a-kinds. Of course, you can soar if you are hitting those four-of-a-kinds .

The overall return of Double Bonus poker is quite good (0.16% or 0.5% for a version which pays 80 bets for the straight flush instead of 50), but the volatility of the game can be frustrating.

Deuces-wild offers a great return (0.76%), but this game is also high in volatility. This game is a favorite for many video poker players, although I find it a little less exciting than Double Bonus poker because the only really big hand (besides the royal straight flush) is four deuces, which pays $250. In this game, you can expect to hit four deuces about once every 6 to 8 hours. In contrast, in Double Bonus poker, you can expect to hit a four-of-a-kind of at least $100 about once ever 2 hours and a $62.50 four-of-a-kind about once every hour. In addition, the use of wild cards increases the difficulty of understanding the hands. But, as with all of these games, playing the game can become very automatic with practice.

Finally, it is best to start out with one game and stick to it until you can play it in your sleep. If you then want to branch out to other games, you can do that but be careful about games that have wildly different strategies. For example, there are subtle differences between near-expert strategy for Jacks or Better and Double Bonus poker, but you would still get a return of about -0.5% in Double Bonus poker if you played with a Jacks or Better strategy. However, if you switch between Double Bonus poker and Deuces Wild, then you must switch your strategy or you will lose money very quickly. Because the strategies are fairly complicated, it is easy to misapply just a couple of rules that will cost you money. So, be careful about switching games unless you really know what you are doing.