Jacks or Better
Jacks or Better is the base video poker game. Five cards, one draw, no wild card of any kind — the hand you end with is exactly the hand the deck gave you. The minimum hand that pays anything at all is a pair of jacks, queens, kings or aces; a pair of tens or lower pays nothing, however good it looks.
That single rule is why the name is a floor, not a description: everything from Bonus Poker to Deuces Wild changes something about this ranking, and the honest way to describe any of them is by what they change from here.
The Full Hand Ranking (9/6, Full Pay)
The two numbers in the name are this table's full house and flush rows — 9 and 6. Every other row is fixed across the whole 9/6-to-6/5 family; only those two move. What that is worth is worked through on the pay tables page.
Why This Is the One to Learn First
No wild card means no exception to memorise: a pair either qualifies or it does not, and a made hand is exactly what it looks like. That makes the optimal way to play every hand easier to reason about than any wild-card variant, and it is the chart most strategy guides — including this site's — start from.
How to play video poker covers the round itself if you have not held and drawn before; this page assumes you have and is about what the cards are worth once you have.
Jacks or Better Video Poker Games
What the Pay Table Is Worth
Under optimal play, 9/6 pays back 99.54%, 8/6 pays back 98.39%, 8/5 pays back 97.3%, 7/5 pays back 96.15%, 6/5 pays back 95%. Those five numbers are one game with five different price tags — the schedule above is the 9/6 row, and a machine advertising "Jacks or Better" without saying which of the five it is offering could be any of them.
The gap between the best and the worst of those five is 4.54 points of return on every hand you play — the largest swing a single naming choice makes in this family. The strategy page explains why the correct hold changes between them, not just the return.
Jacks or Better FAQs
A pair of jacks, queens, kings or aces. A pair of tens or anything lower pays nothing, which is exactly what the name states.
The full house and flush payouts on the schedule above — 9 credits and 6 credits per credit bet. The pay tables page explains why those two rows are the ones worth checking.
It is the most common starting point, because nothing is wild and every hand is exactly what it looks like. Wild-card variants such as Deuces Wild pay differently and need a different chart entirely once you move to them.
Yes, on a handful of common hands. The strategy page covers what changes and why, rather than repeating it here.