Anatomy of a Video Poker Game

Video Poker Basics

The game of video poker is based on the traditional draw poker card game.  You make a wager consisting of some number of coins, and the machine deals you a "hand" or "flop" of five cards.  By pressing buttons or touching the game screen, you choose to hold from zero to all five of the cards.  Then, you are dealt replacements for your discards.  The game then determines what your final best "hand" is and pays you according to its pay table.  

In general, each machine has a maximum number of credits that can be bet on one hand (typically five, but this is changing on many newer games).  Serious players are motivated to always play the maximum number of credits possible, as the payout on the prized Royal Flush is multiplied, if and only if, you have the maximum credits wagered.  For example, a 9/6 Jacks game will pay 250 coins for a Royal Flush if you bet one credit, but 4,000 credits if you bet five.  The total return for a 9/6 Jacks machine is reduced by 1.17% if you are playing less than five credits.  Games offering progressive jackpots universally require a max-credit bet for the jackpot payout.  As a consequence, if your bankroll doesn't permit playing with max credits bet, you should consider moving to a lower denomination game so you can bet max-credits (there may be exceptions to this rule, i.e., if the lower denomination games are shorter pay OR you have a money management strategy that permits less than max-credit play).

In the casino today, most video poker games use "Ticket In, Ticket Out" (TITO) technology, which eliminates the need for handling coins.  These machines will accept either bills or tickets in the bill validator.  The "Cash Out" button causes the machine to generate a ticket good for the balance of your credits, which may be played in another machine or taken to the cashier's cage and exchanged for cash.  Each of the five cards has a "Hold" button -- newer machines also allow you to touch the cards you want to hold.  You should, of course, always be sure the "HOLD" indicator shows up on the screen before you draw.  Newer machines are designed to be very user friendly.  You may want to check for the following less-than-obvious features on the games you play (older games may not have these features):

	Simply pressing the "DEAL/DRAW" button automatically duplicates your last bet, so it is unnecessary to make a wager between each hand if you're betting the same amount on each hand
	You can hold cards by touching them on the screen
	While your winning hand is being paid, pressing the DEAL/DRAW button causes the credits to be updated immediately, without you having to wait on them to "count up"
	You may be able to adjust the speed of play by using a "Speed" button that appears on the touch screen (some games will not have these, or the casino will have them disabled)
	You can change denominations by touching the denomination amount at the bottom-center area of the screen on multi-denomination machines
	You may receive a "Double Up" option after a winning hand; again, this is controlled by the casino

Of highest importance is the "Pay Table", which lists the payoffs for each bet.  This determines the "payback" percentage of the game.  Your goal should be to play on those machines with the highest payback percentages.

Games and Payouts

State gaming regulations generally require that video poker games be dealt as a "fair game".   Video poker games use a deck of cards as a metaphor for the computational process of determining wins or losses.   The metaphorical cards that are selected for a given hand are determined by a "random number generator" (RNG).  Simply stated, a video poker machine's RNG is computer software that can simulate the drawing of cards at random from a deck of 52.  Video poker RNGs are discussed at length at other internet sites; but because we are not privy to the actual computer code that is used, we must presume the gaming regulators are doing their jobs and adequately testing the RNGs that are in use.  The RNG cannot, by law, be controlled by the casino (they can't just flip a switch to make it pay off less frequently), nor can it relate to extraneous information such as the number of credits on the machine or the amount of time the player has been playing, or anything else (these would, in fact, defeat the randomness of the RNG).

Given that gaming regulations require video poker machines to deal a "fair" game, it follows that the only real control the casino has over the payout is in the machine's "pay table".  This is the list of possible hands and amount that is paid for each, normally displayed on the game's screen.  In evaluating video poker games, the pay table is everything.  Nothing else matters.

A game's pay table can easily be evaluated to determine the average return for the game by using any of a number of popular computer programs.  The process is to have a computer program simulate the correct play of a few million hands and record the results.  Software to do this is commercially available, and using today's computers it takes about 30 seconds to evaluate a game.  

The pay table controls the average return of the game but it also controls the other most important attribute -- the game's variance.  "Variance" is a statistical measure of how the actual return from a game varies around its "expected" (or average) return.  The higher the variance of a game, the larger the bankroll requirements for playing it.   In examining different games, you'll find that JB has a lower variance than most.  This can be attributed to the fact that JB

Today, there are many, many variations on the basic game of video poker.  In general, the game remains the same but the pay tables are different.  However, there are some games that are different in a fundamental way -- for example, Deuces Wild (in which all deuces are wildcards) and Triple Play (in which you play three hands at a time).  To learn about these individual styles of games, click on the links above.