What is video poker

Video poker is a very popular game both online and in land-based casinos. It combines elements of luck and skill from regular poker with a game idea that makes you not dependent on other players. The game is based on five card dark poker and there are many different types of online video poker and many strategies to learn. Compare all online casinos with good video poker and their bonuses here.

Introduction to video poker

Depending on which part of the world you live in, it is possible to find video poker machines in pubs and restaurants, in arcades and in other places of business. The game exploded in popularity a couple of decades ago because it combines some key components: the chance to get a really low house edge, great opportunities to use strategies, and fast games. In addition, video poker is a very easy game to get started with. This is especially true if you already know the poker hand rankings and/or have played dark poker at the dinner table with family and friends.

Whether you're just looking for exciting games for entertainment, or you want to challenge yourself by learning strategies and playing as well as possible, video poker is a game that can be interesting to try. In what follows, we'll look at the history of the game, why there are so many different variations, and how you can learn some basic strategies that will increase your chances of winning at https://svenskanyacasino.com/.

Example of video poker - Jacks or Better

The history of video poker

Video poker began to develop in the 1970s when it became possible to connect a video monitor to a primitive computer, this at a reasonable cost. Many new types of games could be launched thanks to technological developments, but it was video poker that stood out. A year etched in the casino history books is 1979.

That year the game "Draw Poker" was launched. The originator was the company that would eventually become the software giant that today goes by the name International Game Technology (IGT).

Much of the success of Draw Poker, and the other video poker games that followed, came from the fact that many players found it more fun to play alone rather than sitting at a table with a dealer and other players. It is the same reason that has made this genre of casino games continue to be popular even today.

Rules and order of play

Of all the games you can find at online casinos and land-based casinos, video poker probably has the simplest game play. Each hand, regardless of variation, is played as follows:

1. You start by choosing the number of coins to play with and the value per coin and then place your bet.
2. Five cards will appear on the screen. You now get to choose which cards you want to throw.
3. The discarded cards are exchanged for new cards.
4. The hand now displayed on the screen is compared to a pay table based on the five card poker hand ranking. If your hand qualifies, you will receive a payout.

This is all there is to know about the order of play. If you don't know the hand ranking for poker, you can find the paytable next to the cards on the screen. This means that you always have a handy reference available along with the possible payouts. The paytable also shows how the payouts change when playing with different numbers of coins. However, everything is presented quite simply, so there should be no risk of confusion.

Basic tips and strategies

There are some basic ideas that you should know no matter what type of video poker you intend to play. However, with so many variants available, the specific strategies for perfect play for each variant are slightly different from each other. However, they are similar enough that we can say that there are general principles that you should learn first before moving on to more game-specific ways of playing.

First of all, in most games you have to play with five coins (or whatever is the maximum) in order to get the highest payout. This is usually because you get a bigger payout for a royal flush if you play with five coins. It doesn't matter if the coin values ​​are small as long as you play with the maximum number of coins.

Second, there are two main types of video poker. Accordingly, there are also two main categories of strategies to use. The first type uses a standard deck of 52 cards without wild cards. The second type uses jokers and can also be played with more cards in the deck. For the first variant, Jacks or Better is the most common game. For the second, Deuces Wild is the game to study.

We'll go over how to play both of these variations below. There we also describe how to play through the actual hands. First, though, we'll look at some basic ideas that can help you find the right game for you.

Choosing games for online video poker

There are some online casinos that have more than a dozen different variations of video poker. Sometimes you can also find multiple versions of what is essentially the same game. Choosing the right type of game is very important because the wrong choice can cause you to get a bad refund when you play.

It is important to be clear about one thing: There is no reason for any player to ever play a video poker game that does not pay back at least 99% on perfect play. This corresponds to an advantage for the house of 1%.

In Jacks or Better, to take an example, the paytables are based on the payout for house and suit respectively. If a game is characterized as 9/6 Jacks or Better, it means that the payout for house is 9x while the payout for suit is 6x. This 9/6 paytable for this variation has a payback (RTP) of 99.54% on perfect play.

You can easily identify weaker paytables, which will give you a lower payout, based on the winnings of these two outcomes. In short, you only need to look at the house and suit payouts. Here are some examples of different variations of the same game and the best possible payback if you play perfectly.

• 9/5 Jacks or Better: 98.45%
• 8/6 Jacks or Better: 98.39%
• 8/5 Jacks or Better: 97.30%
• 7/5 Jacks or Better: 96.15%

In Deuces Wild, the relevant values ​​are slightly different compared to Jacks or Better. Here it is important to look at the payouts for fives, straight flush, fours and house.

In 15/9/5/3 Deuces Wild, you can actually get a 100.76% payback with perfect play, meaning you, not the house, have the advantage. It is certainly not common to find games with such a pay table, but their existence is quite clear.

Online, you will typically find the following paytables for this variant of video poker:

• 11/15/4/4 Deuces Wild: 99.96%
• 16/10/4/4 Deuces Wild: 99.73%
• 10/15/4/4 Deuces Wild: 99.42%
• 16/9/4/4 Deuces Wild: 99.23%
• 12/9/5/3 Deuces Wild: 98.94%

These are the most common paytables for video poker with jokers and without jokers respectively. Almost all other variants are based on these tables. If you are interested in finding out the maximum payout for a video poker game, which is the standard used to compare different paytables, the information can be found either in the game rules or in an online database.

It is obvious that it is easier to compare paytables in Jacks or Better than in Deuces Wild. However, the paytables in Deuces Wild are always based on the outcomes of four different hands, so that's what we have to go by.

Multi-hand video poker

You can often easily find variants of video poker that allow you to play multiple hands at a time. So how does this work? Yes, you change cards in one hand while the software changes the same number of cards in the other hands completely automatically. With multi-hand you can play 5, 10, 25 and even up to 100 hands simultaneously.

Multi-hand can add a lot of excitement to the gaming experience. However, there is a pitfall to watch out for. Unfortunately, many software providers offer less favorable paytables for their multihand games. It is not uncommon to find, for example, a 9/6 Jacks or Better game with one hand in play per round next to a multihand version that uses an 8/5 or 7/5 paytable instead. Be sure to watch out for this if you choose to play multi-hand.

Find video poker progressive jackpots

In the land-based world of video poker, there are groups of players who set out to play perfect on machines that have progressive jackpots of amounts higher than the average win. If one of the group wins a jackpot, the winnings are shared among all participants. It can be profitable to use such a strategy, and another advantage is that the variance in the games is evened out.

However, this strategy is not immediately useful online. One reason is that the jackpots are not local to individual casinos. Another reason is that it is harder to find progressive pots with a positive expected value.

That being said, playing video poker with jackpots is still a smart choice because you can find yourself in situations where you actually have an advantage over the house. There are a number of progressive video poker games available online. Here's some information on some of the most popular along with data on when they have a positive expected value in each round.

• Playtech's Mega Jacks – As one of the best progressive games in the genre, this is a 9/6 Jacks or Better game that pays out a royal flush progressive jackpot. Because the game is so popular, the jackpot pays out often. The jackpot only needs to be 4,922 coins or more for players to have an edge over the house.
• Playtech's Jacks or Better Progressive – This is a 7/5 Jacks or Better game with a royal flush progressive jackpot that theoretically becomes profitable when 81,388 or more coins are in the pot. What stands out about this game is that you always play 10 hands at once, which is very unusual for jackpot games.
• Microgaming's Jackpot Deuces – You'll play with SEK 10 (€1) per coin in this Deuces Wild game with a natural diamond royal flush progressive jackpot. Bets have an expected positive value when the jackpot amounts to at least €53,980. Notably, the game is basically the only Deuces Wild variant with a jackpot online.
• Microgaming's SupaJax – This variant is played with 53 cards. The extra card is precisely a SupaJax card . You win the progressive jackpot with four jacks and SupaJax as kicker. This game also requires a bet of SEK 10 (€1) per coin and the game has a positive value if the jackpot amounts to at least €52,417.

Searching for these jackpots and starting to play when they are expected to be profitable is a smart strategy for finding extra value in video poker. However, because the jackpots hit so often, the strategy is not as suitable online as it is for a land-based casino.

Video Poker Strategy: Beginner and Advanced

Every time you play video poker, regardless of the variant, you are faced with a situation where you have to make a decision: What cards to fold? If we include the choice to simply lay all cards down, there are 32 ways to play a given hand based on the number of ways you can throw cards. All video poker strategies are about showing which of the 32 ways will give you the best results, on average, over time.

There are types of finished hands, draw hands, and other hands that will give you more value than others. These different types of situations can also be ranked based on how big the value can actually be. As a result, video poker strategy guides must be based on showing players which situations offer more value than others, especially when a hand can be played more than one way.

In what follows, we will break down the basics into variations with jokers and video poker with jokers. We start from how the analysis of value should be done in order for you to get the theoretically best starting point. This approach will allow you to become quite adept at the basics of video poker strategy in a relatively short amount of time. However, to truly master a specific game, you must abandon the idea of ​​being good at all video poker games. Namely, it requires you to focus on every smallest detail.

Video Poker Without Jokers: Finished Hands and Moves

There is a simple ranking system that we list below. This system shows how you should play the vast majority of difficult hands you may encounter when playing video poker online. The idea behind the system is that you should aim for the best possible option on the list below. The strongest hands are at the top while the weakest are at the bottom.

1. A completed hand of fours or better
2. Four cards that can give a royal flush
3. A finished hand with threes, straights, suits or jacks
4. Four cards that can give a straight flush
5. A finished hand with a paying pair* or two pairs
6. Three cards that can give a royal flush
7. Four cards that can give a suit
8. A finished hand with a non-paying pair*
9. Four cards that can give a straight with eight "outs"

* A paying pair is a pair that pays out a win on its own. A non-paying pair does not provide a payout on its own.

** An eight-out straight draw hand means there are eight cards in the deck that can complete the straight (as opposed to a four-out straight straight draw hand, for which there are only four cards that can complete the straight).

If you can remember these nine points in the right order, you'll be ready to start playing reasonably well in any type of online video poker that doesn't use jokers.

You may notice that high card hands are missing from the list above. This is because, in order to play correctly with high cards, you have to use more advanced strategies (see more below). If you're just looking for a simple strategy for video poker as a whole, which will allow you to play fairly accurately right away, then the focus should be on the above nine points.

Video Poker with Jokers: Finished Hands and Moves

Here we assume that you are playing a variant of video poker with wilds where there are at least four jokers in the deck. There are some variants that only have one or two, but these are basically played like the variants without wilds because the wild cards come up so rarely.

A big difference when it comes to strategies for games with wilds and without wilds, is that in the former you typically need better hands to get payouts. In addition, the strategies must take into account how many wilds you have in your hand. Playing with two or three jokers is actually really easy because you will always get at least threes. It is also difficult to make mistakes! For that reason, we will focus on how to play with one joker or no joker.

With zero jokers in your hand, you can usually play the hand based on the nine points we've listed above. There is only one significant addition that you should note carefully:

Since wild cards make it easier to improve non-paying pairs, each individual pair must be played as if it were a paying pair.

If you have exactly one wild card in your hand, you can play the nine-point strategy with the following changes (note that four of the nine points are then deleted from the list):

• For point four: The only drawing hands to straight flush with four cards that rank higher than threes, straights or suits are hands with three consecutive non-jokers of value five or higher. All other drawing hands to a four-card straight flush are ranked just after these completed hands.
• In Deuces Wild, odd pairs never win, so points five and eight are deleted.
• Straight moves and flush moves should be ignored (unless they can produce a straight flush). This causes points seven and nine to be deleted.

If you can't get a hand together based on these guidelines, it's actually best to keep your joker and trade the remaining cards.

Advanced Video Poker Strategy: Play High Card Hands

One advantage of playing video poker variants with jokers is that you don't have to worry as much about high card hands. If you have no wild card in your hand, and you don't have at least two cards that can make a royal flush, just throw all the cards and hope for the best.

When playing without wilds, however, you will quite often find yourself in situations where you have no moves to aim for. In these situations, when you only have a high card, knowing how to make the best of bad conditions can make a big difference in your win percentage.

Below is a schematic of how you should think strategically with high card only hands. The further up the list your hand is, the better.

1. Two paying cards of the same suit*
2. Three cards that can give a straight flush (regardless of value)
3. Two paying cards of different colors**
4. K-10, Q-10 or J-10 in the same color
5. An individual paying card*

* A paying card is one that pays out if it forms a pair.
** Different colors are, for example, spades and hearts.

The list is often referred to as the Fabulous Five . It's a little harder to memorize than the nine-point list we've based most strategies on. However, it may be worth the time and effort given the valuable guidance it provides in the really difficult situations of video poker.

Summary

Video poker is a genre of game that remains popular decade after decade. That definitely says something about the game, especially since the genre hasn't really changed much in decades. In addition, there are plenty of alternatives within online casinos to compete with.

One reason for its continued popularity is the combination of the fundamentally simple game model and the great depth in terms of opportunities for strategic play. The fact that you can actually beat the casino in several of the games (if you pick the right game and play correctly) obviously also adds to the appeal of video poker.