Video Poker

How to play Video Poker

Video poker is draw poker for one. You are dealt five cards, keep the ones you like, swap the rest once, and are paid for the hand you finish with. There is no dealer to beat and nobody to bluff: the only decision is which cards to hold, and that decision is the whole game.

The game here is Jacks or Better, the original and still the best known. The chips are play chips. Nothing on this page is money: there is nothing to buy, nothing to win and no sign-up.

A hand, step by step

• Choose your bet, from 1 to 5 chips, with the − and + buttons and press Deal.
• Five cards are dealt face up. Tap each card you want to keep: it lifts and is marked Held. Tap it again to let it go.
• Press Draw. Every card you did not hold is replaced, once.
• The five cards you now have are paid by the pay table. A pair of jacks or better is the least that pays.

You may hold all five cards, or none of them.

The pay table

The table on the cloth shows what each hand pays for a bet of 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 chips, with the column for your bet lit up. Your bet is taken when the cards are dealt and the payout is everything that comes back, so jacks or better returns your bet, two pair doubles it, and so on up.

The last two columns are for a bet of five chips with the best hold every time. Most hands pay nothing, and most of what comes back comes from the small hands: two pair, three of a kind and a pair of jacks or better make up about seven chips in every ten returned.

The hands

• Royal flush: ace, king, queen, jack and ten of one suit.
• Straight flush: five cards in a row in one suit, such as 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 of hearts.
• Four of a kind: four cards of one rank.
• Full house: three of one rank and two of another.
• Flush: five cards of one suit.
• Straight: five cards in a row in any suits. The ace can be low (A, 2, 3, 4, 5) or high (10, J, Q, K, A), but a straight cannot run round the corner.
• Three of a kind: three cards of one rank.
• Two pair: two cards of one rank and two of another.
• Jacks or better: a pair of jacks, queens, kings or aces. A pair of tens or lower pays nothing.

Why five chips is the bet to make

Every hand pays in proportion to the bet except one. A royal flush pays 250 for each chip on bets of 1 to 4, but 4,000 on a bet of 5, which is 800 a chip. That bonus is why the table returns 99.54% with five chips bet and 98.37% with fewer, so the bet starts at 5. If your chips run low the game plays for what you have.

Chips and games

• A game starts with 1,000 chips. If they run out the game is over, and New game starts again with 1,000.
• Every hand is dealt from a full pack of 52 cards, shuffled afresh. The cards you draw are the next ones in that same pack, so a card you threw away cannot come back.
• Nothing in the deal depends on how you are doing. There are no hot or cold streaks beyond what the cards happen to do.
• Stats shows how many hands you have played, which paying hands you have made and the most chips you have held.

Which cards to hold

For every deal there is one hold that pays best in the long run. The Hint button finds it exactly: it plays out every possible draw for each of the 32 ways of holding your five cards, about 2.6 million hands in all, and tells you which cards to keep and what that pays on average. On a phone it may take a moment.

You do not need the Hint to play well. Go down this list and stop at the first line that fits your cards. A high card is a jack, queen, king or ace.

1. Four of a kind, a straight flush or a royal flush: keep it.
2. Four cards to a royal flush, even if that means breaking up a flush, a straight or a high pair.
3. Three of a kind, a straight, a flush or a full house. With three of a kind, hold the three and draw two.
4. Four cards to a straight flush.
5. Two pair.
6. A high pair.
7. Three cards to a royal flush.
8. Four cards to a flush.
9. A low pair (tens or lower).
10. Four cards in a row that can be finished at either end, such as 6, 7, 8, 9.
11. Two high cards of the same suit.
12. Three cards to a straight flush.
13. Two high cards of different suits. With three, keep the two lowest.
14. A ten with a jack, queen or king of the same suit.
15. One high card.
16. Nothing: draw five new cards.

Followed to the letter, the list returns 99.46%. The Hint’s exact play returns 99.54%; the difference comes from a few rare hands where the list is slightly off.

Mistakes worth avoiding

• Do not keep a spare high card with a pair. Hold the pair alone and draw three.
• Do not break up a low pair to chase a straight. The pair is worth more, with one exception: a pair of tens with a jack, queen and king.
• Do not keep the ace when you have an ace and two other high cards in different suits. The two lower ones leave more straights open.
• Do not draw to a straight with a gap in the middle, such as 5, 6, 8, 9. It is only ever the best hold when at least three of the four cards are high cards.
• Do not keep a winning pair of jacks when you hold four cards to a royal flush. The royal draw is worth far more.

Can you beat it?

Not quite. With perfect play this pay table returns 99.54 chips for every 100 bet, so over a long session the chips slowly go down, with swings on the way: a royal flush turns up about once in 40,000 hands and four of a kind about once in 420.

This is the most generous Jacks or Better pay table in common use, known as “9/6” after what the full house and the flush pay. A table that pays 8 and 5 for those two hands looks almost the same and returns 97.3%.