Video Poker
In video poker you receive five cards, keep any of them, replace the rest once, and are paid for the finished hand from a table printed on the screen. Nobody plays against you: every qualifying hand is paid at the listed rate, and the hand you end with depends partly on the cards you chose to keep.
That choice is what separates it from a slot. For a given pay table, each of the 2,598,960 different five-card hands a 52-card deck can deal has a hold that returns the most over time (now and then two holds tie), and every return quoted on these pages assumes you find it. Each figure is exact, covering every deal and every draw, and none is taken from a game's marketing.
Four Games to Try Free
These four run free in demo mode, with no registration and no deposit, so you can read the pay table on screen and practice your holds before any money is involved. The whole library, with the pay table and return of each game, is on the free video poker games page.
The Three Things That Decide Any Game
The rules of the variant set which hands pay at all and whether any card is wild. Jacks or Better pays from a pair of jacks; Deuces Wild makes all four 2s wild and so starts paying only at three of a kind; Joker Poker adds a wild 53rd card, and its Kings or Better tables pay from a pair of kings.
The pay table is the second: two games with the same rules and the same name can pay different amounts on a few lines, and those lines move the return. Jacks or Better with its full house at 9 and its flush at 6 per credit bet, written 9/6, returns 99.54%; at 6/5 the same game returns 95.00%. Every other line is identical, so the difference is easy to miss unless you look for it.
Your holds are the third, because a return is only reached by holding correctly on every hand, and the correct hold is not fixed: it follows the pay table, so a hold that is right on one schedule can be a mistake on another. The strategy guide shows how the right hold is found.
Nine Variants at a Glance
Returns are at the maximum bet with perfect play; betting below the maximum lowers most of them. Swing is the standard deviation of one hand's result, in units of the bet: the higher it is, the wider a session's results spread. Figures above 100% are long-run averages that assume perfect play, and no session is promised any of them, so play only with money you can afford to lose.
What the Games Here Pay
Habanero's ten titles are ten different variants, and all ten return between 96% and 97% at the maximum bet, while the best-known schedules of those same variants run from 99.14% (Tens or Better) to 100.76% (Deuces Wild). On Habanero's games, then, the choice of variant barely moves the return, and one name can hide very different tables from one provider to the next, as the pay tables guide shows with Jacks or Better. Every game, its table and its return are listed on the free games page.
A Short History
Coin-operated poker machines predate electronics by decades. The Sittman and Pitt company of Brooklyn built a coin-operated one in 1891, with five drums of card faces and prizes paid over the counter, and Charles Fey's Skill Draw of 1901 added a hold feature, the ancestor of today's draw. In the early 1970s Dale Electronics' Poker-Matic brought an electronic version to Las Vegas casinos.
Those early machines paid nothing below two pair. Video poker took off once the minimum winning hand came down to a pair of jacks, and SIRCOMA, the company that later became IGT, launched Draw Poker in 1979. By the early 1980s the game was established on casino floors. In 1998 Ernie Moody's Triple Play Poker became the first machine to play three hands at once, the forerunner of today's multi-hand games.
The bonus family is built in layers: Bonus Poker raises the pay on some fours of a kind, Double Bonus raises it further, and Double Double Bonus adds kicker bonuses on top.
Which Page Answers Which Question
- How does a round work, and how do the hands rank? The deal, the draw, every button on screen and the full hand ranking with examples are on the how to play page.
- What do 9/6, Full Pay and NSU mean? How to read a pay table, which lines identify each schedule, and what betting below the maximum costs: video poker pay tables.
- Which cards should I hold on each deal? How the correct hold is worked out, decisions with the value of each option and the price of common mistakes: video poker strategy. Each variant page carries its own hold list.
- Where can I try a game without money? All our games in demo mode, with the pay table each one runs: free video poker games.
Video Poker FAQ
They are two more Jacks or Better relatives in our free library that do not have pages of their own yet. All American pays the full house, flush and straight the same amount and raises the straight flush, with two pair at even money; its 8/8/8 schedule returns 100.72%. Aces and Faces pays four of a kind by rank, aces first, then jacks to kings, then 2s to 10s; its 8/5 schedule returns 99.26%. Habanero's All American in our library runs 7/7/7, for 96.27%.
Jacks or Better is the natural starting point. It has no wild cards, one kind of four of a kind, and the simplest hold decisions, and every other variant is described as a change to it. Once its holds feel natural, the bonus games and the wild-card games are easier to learn as a set of differences.
Wild cards do not raise the return by themselves. They make strong hands far more common, so the pay table is built around that: the lowest paying hand moves up, and the common hands pay less. Whether a wild-card game returns more than a game without them depends entirely on its schedule.
No. The return is the share of all money bet that comes back over a very long run, not how often a hand wins. In Jacks or Better more than half of all deals end with no paying hand, and much of what comes back arrives as small wins: two pair and three of a kind make up almost half of the return, and a paying pair, which only hands back the stake, about a fifth. Short sessions routinely finish well above or below the long-run figure.
More About Video Poker
What each variant changes, what it costs you, and where to play it free.
Every demo on the site, with the pay table each game was found running and what it returns.
No wild cards and a pair of jacks to win. Its 9/6 table returns 99.54% with perfect play.
Four of a kind paid by rank: aces 80, 2s to 4s 40, everything else 25.
Bigger quad bonuses and two pair cut to even money. The 10/7 table returns 100.17%.
The fifth card counts: four aces with a 2, 3 or 4 beside them pay 400 instead of 160.
A 53-card deck with one wild joker, paying from a pair of kings. The 20/7/5 table returns 100.65%.
All four 2s are wild, so nothing below three of a kind pays. Full Pay returns 100.76%.
Wild deuces with five of a kind paid by rank, and 400 for four deuces with an ace.
A pair of tens pays too, paid for with a smaller full house and flush.
Four aces and four eights share an 80 bonus, four sevens pay 50. The 8/5 table returns 99.78%.
The round, the buttons, how the deck is dealt, and every hand from royal flush down.
How to read 9/6, NSU or 20/7/5, and what one credit on a single line is worth.
How the correct hold is found, what common mistakes cost, and why a strategy from another game fails.