Video Poker Strategy
Roulette and most slots give you nothing to decide once the bet is placed. Video poker is the opposite: after the deal, you choose which cards to keep, and that choice has a provably correct answer for any given hand and pay table. Getting it right or wrong is the single biggest thing a player controls at the table.
"Optimal strategy" means a ranked list of every possible five-card holding pattern by its long-run expected value on a specific pay table, worked out by exhaustively checking every draw outcome — not a rule of thumb. Wizard of Odds publishes the full chart for 9/6 Jacks or Better, the reference most strategy tables in this genre are built the same way as.
What Following It Actually Buys You
Optimal strategy does not turn a losing game into a winning one, and it does not guarantee any single hand goes your way — it minimises the long-run gap between what you are paid and what the pay table would return if every hand were played correctly. On 9/6 Jacks or Better that gap between optimal and careless play is commonly several percentage points, on top of the game's own 99.54% return.
The chart changes with the pay table, not just the variant name. The full 9/6 schedule makes drawing to a flush worth slightly more than it is on an 8/5 table, and the correct hold on a handful of common hands shifts along with it.
What People Believe About Video Poker, and What Is Actually True
A Machine That Hasn't Paid Is Due
This machine hasn't hit a royal in ages, so it's about to.
Reality Check
Every hand is dealt independently from a full deck; the machine has no memory of what it dealt last, and neither does an online RNG. A royal flush is exactly as likely on the next hand as it was on the last one, regardless of how long it has been since the previous one.
Changing Your Bet Size Changes Your Odds
Betting less protects you when you're on a cold run, and betting more helps you catch up.
Reality Check
Bet size does not change the chance of any hand or the pay table's percentages — it only scales the size of the win or loss. The one real exception is the royal flush at max coin, which is a fixed bonus multiple rather than a smooth scale-up, and it is the only reason to bet max at all.
Holding at Random Is Fine if You Play Long Enough
Over enough hands, it evens out whichever cards you hold.
Reality Check
It does not. Every hold pattern has its own expected value, and the gap between the best and a careless choice on the same hand is real money over any number of hands, not something that averages away. This is exactly what optimal strategy above the fold on this page exists to close.
Wild Cards Need a Different Chart Entirely
A Jacks or Better chart does not carry over to a wild-card game. On Deuces Wild, a lone pair of anything but deuces pays nothing, so holding one — the right move most of the time on Jacks or Better — is often wrong. On Joker Poker, a single wild joker changes the value of every partial hand it could complete.
A kicker rule adds a further layer on top of that: on Double Double Bonus, which specific card sits beside a four of a kind can matter enough to change whether it is worth holding a fifth card at all. Each variant page on this site names what changes about its own hold decisions; none of them restate the base chart above.
Video Poker Strategy FAQs
No. It minimises your long-run cost against a specific pay table's own return — it cannot change what any single hand is dealt. Short sessions still vary a great deal either way.
Because the value of a partial hand — a four-card flush draw, say — depends on what a completed flush pays, and that payout is exactly what differs between the two schedules. The pay tables page covers what each ratio is worth.
No, and not close. A raw pair of anything but deuces pays nothing on Deuces Wild, which alone inverts one of the most common holds on Jacks or Better.
Wizard of Odds publishes full strategy tables per variant and pay table — the 9/6 Jacks or Better chart is the reference this page is built on. This site does not reproduce the full hand-by-hand table.