Video poker rules: poker against the pay table.
Video poker takes about five minutes to learn. You are dealt five cards, you keep the ones you want, you draw once, and the game pays whatever its pay table says your final hand is worth. There is no dealer to beat and no other players. This page covers the learning part: which hands pay, how a hand plays out, every button you will press, and what the cards are doing behind the screen.
There is no dealer to beat.
A hand of video poker is won in exactly one way: your final five cards make a hand on the pay table. Nobody else’s cards are involved, and the game has no hand of its own to beat yours.
“It is a slot game with cards on it.”
A slot’s odds are hidden inside it, and nothing you do changes them. Video poker shows you its pay table, deals from a 52-card deck and lets you choose what to keep, so its odds can be worked out exactly, and your choices move them.
“It is draw poker against a price list.”
You get one draw to make the best hand you can, and the pay table says what each hand is worth. Keep every hand exactly as it is dealt and 9/6 Jacks or Better pays back 33.69% of what you bet. Hold the right cards and the same game pays back 99.54%.
The gap between those two figures is the whole skill of the game, and it is all in the hold. Throwing every card away and drawing five new ones every time pays back the same 33.69% as keeping everything: five random cards are five random cards. The return comes from keeping the right ones in between.
Which hands pay, and which do not.
Video poker uses ordinary poker hands, ranked the usual way. The game only asks one question of your final five cards: is this hand on the pay table? Here is the table from 9/6 Jacks or Better, the game every other one is built on.
| Hand | Example | 1 coin | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 coins |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Royal flushA♠ K♠ Q♠ J♠ 10♠ | A♠ K♠ Q♠ J♠ 10♠ | 250 | 500 | 750 | 1,000 | 4,000 |
| Straight flush9♥ 8♥ 7♥ 6♥ 5♥ | 9♥ 8♥ 7♥ 6♥ 5♥ | 50 | 100 | 150 | 200 | 250 |
| Four of a kindQ♣ Q♦ Q♥ Q♠ 4♦ | Q♣ Q♦ Q♥ Q♠ 4♦ | 25 | 50 | 75 | 100 | 125 |
| Full house8♠ 8♦ 8♣ K♥ K♠ | 8♠ 8♦ 8♣ K♥ K♠ | 9 | 18 | 27 | 36 | 45 |
| FlushK♣ 10♣ 7♣ 4♣ 2♣ | K♣ 10♣ 7♣ 4♣ 2♣ | 6 | 12 | 18 | 24 | 30 |
| Straight9♦ 8♠ 7♣ 6♥ 5♦ | 9♦ 8♠ 7♣ 6♥ 5♦ | 4 | 8 | 12 | 16 | 20 |
| Three of a kind7♥ 7♣ 7♦ K♠ 2♦ | 7♥ 7♣ 7♦ K♠ 2♦ | 3 | 6 | 9 | 12 | 15 |
| Two pairJ♠ J♦ 4♣ 4♥ 9♠ | J♠ J♦ 4♣ 4♥ 9♠ | 2 | 4 | 6 | 8 | 10 |
| Jacks or betterQ♥ Q♣ 8♦ 5♠ 3♣ | Q♥ Q♣ 8♦ 5♠ 3♣ | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
A pair of jacks, queens, kings or aces. A pair of tens or lower pays nothing on this game, and nor does a high card on its own.
High or low in a straight: 10-J-Q-K-A and A-2-3-4-5 both count, but Q-K-A-2-3 does not.
Never rank against each other. A flush is any five cards of one suit.
What “9/6” means
Jacks or Better games are known by two numbers from this table: what the full house and the flush pay for one coin. On standard Jacks or Better the rest of the table is the same from one game to the next, so those two numbers tell you the price of the game before you play a hand.
Our video poker hub sets six Jacks or Better pay tables side by side.
How a hand actually plays out.
Six steps, always in this order. Step three is where the skill is.
-
You choose a bet
Pick a coin size and how many coins to play, from one to five, before any cards appear. The bet multiplies every line of the pay table the same way, except the royal flush, which pays far more at five coins.
-
Five cards are dealt
All five face up, from a single 52-card deck shuffled for this hand. There is no hidden card and no hand for you to beat. If the deal is already a paying hand, the game highlights it, but nothing is paid yet.
-
You choose what to hold
Tap a card, or the HOLD button under it, to keep it. You can keep all five, none, or anything in between. This is where the skill of the game lies, and it is worth a great deal: keeping every hand as dealt pays back 33.69% at 9/6, while holding the right cards pays back 99.54%.
This is the whole game -
You draw, once
Press DRAW and every card you did not hold is replaced from the same deck: the 47 cards you have not seen. There is no second draw, and you can change your holds right up until you press it.
-
The game pays the final hand
It looks your five cards up on the pay table and adds the payout to your credits. A pair of jacks or better pays 1 for 1: your bet back and nothing more.
-
The next hand is a new deck
The cards are shuffled again before every deal. Nothing carries over: not the last hand, not the last royal, not how long the game has gone without one.
Every button you will press.
Four buttons run the whole game, though the labels vary a little from one game to the next.
Adds one coin to the bet, up to five. Your balance shows as credits: $20 at a 25¢ coin size is 80 credits.
Only on the way to five coins. Fewer than five is the same game with a much smaller royal flush.
Bets five coins and deals the hand in one press.
Every hand, at a coin size you can afford. At five coins the royal pays 800 for 1; at fewer it pays 250, and 9/6 Jacks or Better drops from 99.54% to 98.37%. That makes five 25¢ coins a hand cheaper to play than one $1 coin: about $0.58 per 100 hands on average, against $1.63.
Keeps a card for the draw. Tap it again to let it go. Held cards are marked HELD on the screen.
On the cards with the highest average return for this hand, which is rarely the hand that looks most exciting.
One button, two jobs. Before the hand it reads DEAL and deals five cards; after the deal it reads DRAW, replaces every card you did not hold and settles the hand. Holding all five and pressing draw keeps the hand you were dealt.
Draw only when your holds are right. Check the HELD marks first, because nothing can be undone after.
Not sure which cards to hold? The solver on our video poker hub prices all 32 ways to hold a dealt hand, for three games.
Double up
After a win, some games offer to double it. On the usual version the game deals one card face up, you pick one of four face-down cards, and a higher card doubles your win while a lower one loses it. Equal ranks push and you can go again.
Unlike most extras in a casino, this one is fairly priced. Two cards from the same deck are as likely to fall one way as the other, so you win 47.06% of the time, lose 47.06% and push 5.88%. It costs nothing on average and adds nothing either: it only makes your wins bigger and rarer. Take it if you like the swing; decline it if you are trying to make a bankroll last.
The game deals from a full deck.
Behind the screen is a virtual 52-card deck, shuffled by a random number generator before every hand. In a fair game every card is as likely as any other, on the deal and on the draw, and that is what lets every figure on this page be counted exactly rather than guessed.
Because every card is equally likely, the odds of every hand can be counted. Here is how often each paying hand turns up on the deal, and how often you finish with it once you have drawn, holding every hand correctly:
| Hand | On the deal | After the draw | The draw makes it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Royal flush | 1 in 649,740 | 1 in 40,391 | 16.1× as common |
| Straight flush | 1 in 72,193 | 1 in 9,148 | 7.9× as common |
| Four of a kind | 1 in 4,165 | 1 in 423 | 9.8× as common |
| Full house | 1 in 694 | 1 in 87 | 8.0× as common |
| Flush | 1 in 509 | 1 in 91 | 5.6× as common |
| Straight | 1 in 255 | 1 in 89 | 2.9× as common |
| Three of a kind | 1 in 47 | 1 in 13.4 | 3.5× as common |
| Two pair | 1 in 21 | 1 in 7.7 | 2.7× as common |
| Jacks or better | 1 in 7.7 | 1 in 4.7 | 1.7× as common |
How to read it
The draw makes every paying hand more common, and the royal flush most of all. A royal flush is dealt once in 649,740 hands, but you finish with one about once in 40,391, around 16 times as often, because the right holds keep drawing at it.
It is still rare. At 1,000 hands an hour, 40,391 hands is about 40 hours of play, and a game that has just paid one is exactly as likely to pay the next.
At the other end, 79.37% of deals are worth nothing as they stand: a pair of tens or lower, or no pair at all. After the draw that falls to 54.54%, which is still more than half of all hands. The draw figures come from our engine, which plays all 2,598,960 deals the best of their 32 ways.
What each result is worth.
Video poker payouts are quoted “for 1”: they include the bet you made. So a hand that pays 1 for 1 is not a win at all. It is your money back.
That is five 25¢ coins, so the royal flush pays its full 800 for 1: $1,000.00. Bet fewer coins and it pays 250 for 1 instead.
9/6 Jacks or Better with every hand held correctly. Even played perfectly, more than half of all hands lose. The game still pays back 99.54% because the hands that do win cover nearly all of those losses.
Check the pay table before you play
The same game can be offered at different prices. On 9/6 Jacks or Better a full house pays 9 for 1 and a flush 6; on 8/5, 8 and 5. Here is what that does to the same two hands on the same bet:
Over the long run that is 99.54% paid back against 97.30%: 2.24% of everything you bet, for the same cards and the same play. The pay table is shown in the game itself, above the cards or on its help screen. Our video poker hub prices six of them.
The same game at different prices.
Everything above this point is true in every video poker game. What follows is not. The same game is sold at different prices, the price is printed in its pay table, and the difference comes out of every hand you play. Ranked by what it is worth:
| The line | Look for | Avoid | Worth |
|---|---|---|---|
| Joker Poker: four of a kind Kings or better with a joker in the deck. Four of a kind comes often enough that three coins on that line move the whole game. | Pays 20100.65% | Pays 1798.09% | 2.56% |
| Jacks or Better: full house and flush The two numbers that 9/6 and 8/5 refer to. Everything else on the table is usually the same. | 9 and 699.54% | 8 and 597.30% | 2.24% |
| Double Double Bonus: full house and flush The same two lines, on a game whose big four-of-a-kind payouts make it swing far harder. | 9 and 698.98% | 8 and 596.79% | 2.19% |
| Deuces Wild: four of a kind, full house, flush The worse table pays more for the full house and flush, and less for the four of a kind that wild cards make common. Five of a kind and the straight flush pay 15 and 9 on both. | 5 / 3 / 2100.76% | 4 / 4 / 398.91% | 1.85% |
| Coins bet: the royal flush Same 9/6 game. At five coins the royal pays 800 for 1; at fewer, 250. | Five coins99.54% | Fewer than five98.37% | 1.17% |
| Bonus Poker: full house One coin on one line, and it is worth more than a full point. | Pays 899.17% | Pays 798.01% | 1.16% |
Each pair is the same game; the percentages under each table are what it pays back with every hand held correctly for that table, worked out by our engine over every possible deal, and “worth” is the gap between them. The six games on our hub each carry their best common pay table.
Six beliefs the cards do not support.
Each of these sounds reasonable after a few hundred hands. Each one costs money, and the numbers show why.
Never break up a hand that already pays.
With A♠ K♠ Q♠ J♠ 3♠ you are holding a flush that pays 6 for 1. Holding the four royal cards instead returns 18.4255 for every 1 bet, against 6.0000 for the flush: one of the 47 cards left completes a royal worth 800, and plenty of the others still pay.
The game has already decided what I will draw.
Some games do pick the replacement cards at the moment of the deal. It changes nothing: each of the 47 cards you have not seen is equally likely to be the one you get, so every hold returns exactly what it would if the cards were drawn later.
This game is due a royal.
Every hand starts from a new shuffle. At 9/6 the next hand has the same 1 in 40,391 chance of a royal however long the last one was. At 1,000 hands an hour that averages about 40 hours between royals, and waiting never brings the next one closer.
Keeping a high card with my pair gives me a better chance.
With A♣ A♦ K♣ 7♥ 3♠ at 9/6, holding the two aces returns 1.5365 for every 1 bet; keeping the king as well, 1.4163. The king takes the place of a card you could have drawn, and drawn cards are what turn a pair into three of a kind or two pair.
Always go for the royal.
A pair of kings beats three cards to a royal at 9/6. With K♥ K♠ Q♥ J♥ 7♣, keeping the kings returns 1.5365 and the royal draw 1.4884. The kings are certain to pay; the royal draw finishes on a paying hand only 38.9% of the time.
A small pair is not worth keeping.
It pays nothing as dealt, but it is often the best hold available. With 5♣ 5♦ 6♥ 7♠ 8♣ the pair of fives returns 0.8237 and the straight draw 0.6809. A small pair finishes on a paying hand 28.7% of the time.
Every return on this page is for each 1 you bet, worked out over every possible draw by the same engine as the solver on our hub, which prices all 32 holds of any dealt hand.
Read the pay table, then hold the right cards.
Three things to take into the game.
The hold is the whole skill
Keep every hand as dealt and 9/6 Jacks or Better pays back 33.69%. Hold the right cards and the same game pays back 99.54%. Nothing else you do comes close.
Pays 1 means your bet back
A pair of jacks returns your bet and nothing more. Even played perfectly, 54.54% of hands at 9/6 lose outright.
The price is in the pay table
9/6 against 8/5 is worth 2.24% of everything you bet, and betting fewer than five coins costs 1.17%. Check both before the first hand.